Review: Life and Fate

-

Life and Fate
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Meant to be one of these 'classics' which become a must read for everyone but for me it's the same as Dostoyevski's The Brother's Karamazov - unreadable. There must be something about Russian literature that causes me to become soporific. I just can't get into this. I've ploughed through a third of this but have finally closed the pages. I can't become caring about the characters, the plot has become meaningless. Perhaps I've committed some heresy with this book but I find it just turgid and cold.



View all my reviews

Comments

  1. Anonymous14 February 2012 at 15:57

    Yes, Russian lit is definitely an acquired taste. Personally, I never really got into Dostoevsky after college (or any other Russian prose author, really), though I remember enjoying Notes from Underground immensely.

    On the other hand, Russian philosophy is amazing. Mikhail Bakhtin was one of my professor's favourites during college, and that rubbed off on me a bit. And Nikolai Berdyaev's penetrating insights into the nature of religion really struck home for me, and (along with Kierkegaard and Samuel Johnson) he was one of my primary influences for 'rediscovering' the Anglican tradition after my secular wanderings (even though he was Eastern Orthodox).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris Hall14 February 2012 at 20:28

    Thanks for posting Matthew. Hopefully one day I will acquire a taste for such literature.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Spammers, trolls and blatantly offensive posts will be summarily deleted. My blog, my rules. Otherwise comment away!

Popular posts from this blog

Sound familiar?

-
Image
Watching the BBC interview of Adele by Graham Norton tonight and Adele sang one of the new tracks off her forthcoming album. The track was called A Million Years Ago. Listening to it reminded me of a different song by someone else. You know where you almost recognise a tune but get lost with the words, yet it's the words which are the key! Eventually it came to me, El Shaddai by Michael Card, famously sung by Amy Grant. It's a song that I occasionally play during worship. Have a listen. What do you think?
Read more

The Archbishop and Wonga

-
Image
Image via CrunchBase Have to say I was initially chuffed to see the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby laying down a challenge to Wonga and others of their ilk. The AoC communicated that he wanted to see the payday loan industry driven out of business by promoting the use of credit unions. The payday loan industry is involved in outright usury which is condemned by many faiths such as Islam and Christianity and others. Usury we can look upon as the lending of money at exorbitant rates of interest. But then I thought what was the AoC actually saying? He wanted to replace excessive usury with not so excessive usury. Is that what we should be aiming for? Plus the architects of our current austerity are backing the AoC! I would love to see all of the credit industry driven out of business but it will only be done by paying workers a decent wage, sharing in the profit of their labour and making capitalism history. At the end of the day this sort of initiative is just a...
Read more