Feet stuck in the Russian spring time mud

This is a tough book to get through. I’m on page 352. 131 more pages to the end. I have no doubt that I’ll finish it. I WANT to finish it this weekend, but I can’t remember the last time I read more than 100 pages in a weekend. We don’t have anything planned for the weekend so the possibility of finishing is well…a real possibility.

I have to admit, I’ll be happy to finish this book. I don’t think I started off this project with a good book. It's been a real challenge.

I was talking with Mirela (mom) earlier today about reading another book (Ian Frazier’s Travels In Siberia) and how it took a bit of time for me to get used to the way he wrote (just the first couple of chapters). I think it was due to me being so immersed in a different type or maybe style of writing. The translation by Maude of Resurrection is worded in what I can only describe as a more “classical” language (I’m pretty sure that’s not even the correct way of describing it) and the short stories that I have been reading from the 1980s in The Best American Short Stories is also worded differently…sure, it’s not classical…but I feel that there is a difference in writing.

Tolstoy hasn’t exactly pulled me through this novel either. I am finally to the point where Nekhlyudov is preparing to go to Siberia with Maslova. The portion of the novel that held my leg was when Nekhlyudov was in St. Petersburg visiting various individuals attempting to secure the pardon of Maslova and several other convicts that he agreed to assist. Tolstoy reaaaaalllly stretches this portion out. Thinking of this, perhaps there was an effort by Tolstoy to make this portion of the novel difficult in order to really drive home to the reader the difficulties of Nekhlyudov’s task. The layers of bureaucracy and uncaring “officials” shuffling Nekhlyudov from one person to the next.

So – as I close in on the final 100 pages of this novel, I start to think about the next book I would like to read.

I have created a spreadsheet of the authors in my collection that I have chosen to include in this project and would hope to add to this collection as time goes on.

Link to the Google docs here.

I think I would like to start a book with that has a collection of short stories. I seem to be able to digest those a bit easier now and in the near future due to what will be my/our new life.

Finally, another WTFED

“Nothing is softer or more yielding than water, yet nothing can beat it for strength. The weak defeats the strong, tenderness defeats cruelty, humility defeats pride. Everyone knows this law but nobody follows it.”