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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
*Read for class.
I barely finished the first volume and it was a fucking torture. Everything else by Gogol is at least mildly interesting, but this is awful. I couldn't read it. I couldn't even finish an amazing audio show, full cast, with music and special effects.
And it's not that I was prejudiced about this book. Maybe a bit, but so I was about many other classics and I at least liked them. This was a nightmare. And I realize that I HAVE to finish both volumes one day, but not now, thank you.
I barely finished the first volume and it was a fucking torture. Everything else by Gogol is at least mildly interesting, but this is awful. I couldn't read it. I couldn't even finish an amazing audio show, full cast, with music and special effects.
And it's not that I was prejudiced about this book. Maybe a bit, but so I was about many other classics and I at least liked them. This was a nightmare. And I realize that I HAVE to finish both volumes one day, but not now, thank you.
The cut-off came at the perfect time. I was going towards 4.5 stars in the last 50 pages for a variety of reasons but if you really, and I mean REALLY, understood what Gogol was intending in this book, even if the cut-off was not intended, you would know why this is a perfect end.
I feel this is the end of an era. I absolutely left a part of my heart in this book.
(There is a re-imagined continuation with 60 pages written 5 years after Gogol's death in my copy. It is not available in other translations I have seen. I am not usually into these kind of things. I considered the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series to have ended with Douglas Adams life and I fear ruining the magic this book has on me right now by reading the continuation in someone else's pen, which I also feel would be irrelevant. I think it ended where it should have unless Gogol himself have imagined it differently. I might go back in a few years and read that final chapter. But for now, for me, Chichikov's story is satisfactory in how I understood the author to have intended the manuscript to come across).
This book has taken a duplex apartment in my head, rent free.
I feel this is the end of an era. I absolutely left a part of my heart in this book.
(There is a re-imagined continuation with 60 pages written 5 years after Gogol's death in my copy. It is not available in other translations I have seen. I am not usually into these kind of things. I considered the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series to have ended with Douglas Adams life and I fear ruining the magic this book has on me right now by reading the continuation in someone else's pen, which I also feel would be irrelevant. I think it ended where it should have unless Gogol himself have imagined it differently. I might go back in a few years and read that final chapter. But for now, for me, Chichikov's story is satisfactory in how I understood the author to have intended the manuscript to come across).
This book has taken a duplex apartment in my head, rent free.
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
funny
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
funny
medium-paced
dark
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes