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4.47 AVERAGE
4.47 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Just a fantastic book, i think it may have changed my life. The introduction by Robert Chandler deserves to be published on its own too. If you're on the fence about reading this book tip yourself over now.
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
"Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer."
READ 2018
An exceptional and exraordinary read which left me utterly breathless in awe horror. Awe, because of the poetic and beautifully descriptive writing; horror, because of the things that were written.
"The earth was vast: even the vast forest had both a beginning and an end, but the earth just stretched on for ever... And grief was something equally vast, equally eternal."
I think we all have those books that you can say changed your life, or at least made big impact on you. Without reading it, you would have been a different person than you are today. This is one of those books for me, just like The Hunger Games, The Book Thief and The Fault in Our Stars, not to even mention Crime and Punishment.
"In the same way, a child's song can appear to make an old man cry. But it isn't the song itself he cries over; the song is simply a key to something in his soul."
This is a LONG book, almost 900 pages, and it took me about three weeks to read, and I'm not used to read a book for such a long time, but I had a lot in school, and I wanted to focus on every word that I read. Which, if you add it up, I guess consists of quite a lot of words. In a lot of the fiction I read, I don't read exactly ever word on every page, that's just unnecessary, but I go along with a reasonably fast flow. However, there are certain stories in which I really don't want to miss out on anything important.
"I see," said Viktor. "If you like a man, he can't be a Jew!"
Everyone laughed.
"It's all very well to laugh," Solomatin replied "but Mukhin didn't think it was funny when Berman sentenced him to be shot."
Basically, we get to follow a family in the Second World War, and people related to them in some way. The point of view swaps often between characters, and I found it quite difficult in the beginning to keep track of who was who, who was the sister of whom, and so on. Then, I realized it didn't really matter whose nephew it was, so instead I decided to focus on the story itself. And sure enough, after a while, I understood who everyone was.
How many people there were like him - forgotten during unforgettable years."
Besides from that, the only small downside of this book in my opinion, was that it could drag on a little bit too long at times, but, the writing was so good that I didn't really mind. Especially some passages were wonderful, and I marked the ones I loved the most in my physical copy. To write as Vasily Grossman, that is what I aspire to do. Sometimes the point he is trying to make takes pages of writing to understand, with poetic philosophy and thoughts.
"What can I say about people? They amaze me as much by their good qualities as by their bad qualities. They are all so different, even though they must undergo the same fate. But then if there's a downpour and most people try to hide, that doesn't mean that they're all the same. People even have their own particular ways of sheltering from rain."
Other times, the point is so blunt and right in front of you, you don't even notice it's there at first. And then you realise the truth in what you just read.
"The conditions the Jews lived in were terrible; and they were neither saints nor villains, they were human beings."
"We Russians, for some reason, are never allowed to be proud of our own people."
The last thing to discuss is, of course, the story and the plot itself. I'm a bit obsessed with historical fiction, so this fit right in. Everything happening in this story is so heartbreaking, and yet you can see these characters filled with hope and happiness even in the darkness.
Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.
I have a lot more favourite quites, but I can't fit in all of them here :( And I can't really say anything else, this is something you have to experience for yourself.
Just pure wonder.
READ 2018
An exceptional and exraordinary read which left me utterly breathless in awe horror. Awe, because of the poetic and beautifully descriptive writing; horror, because of the things that were written.
"The earth was vast: even the vast forest had both a beginning and an end, but the earth just stretched on for ever... And grief was something equally vast, equally eternal."
I think we all have those books that you can say changed your life, or at least made big impact on you. Without reading it, you would have been a different person than you are today. This is one of those books for me, just like The Hunger Games, The Book Thief and The Fault in Our Stars, not to even mention Crime and Punishment.
"In the same way, a child's song can appear to make an old man cry. But it isn't the song itself he cries over; the song is simply a key to something in his soul."
This is a LONG book, almost 900 pages, and it took me about three weeks to read, and I'm not used to read a book for such a long time, but I had a lot in school, and I wanted to focus on every word that I read. Which, if you add it up, I guess consists of quite a lot of words. In a lot of the fiction I read, I don't read exactly ever word on every page, that's just unnecessary, but I go along with a reasonably fast flow. However, there are certain stories in which I really don't want to miss out on anything important.
"I see," said Viktor. "If you like a man, he can't be a Jew!"
Everyone laughed.
"It's all very well to laugh," Solomatin replied "but Mukhin didn't think it was funny when Berman sentenced him to be shot."
Basically, we get to follow a family in the Second World War, and people related to them in some way. The point of view swaps often between characters, and I found it quite difficult in the beginning to keep track of who was who, who was the sister of whom, and so on. Then, I realized it didn't really matter whose nephew it was, so instead I decided to focus on the story itself. And sure enough, after a while, I understood who everyone was.
How many people there were like him - forgotten during unforgettable years."
Besides from that, the only small downside of this book in my opinion, was that it could drag on a little bit too long at times, but, the writing was so good that I didn't really mind. Especially some passages were wonderful, and I marked the ones I loved the most in my physical copy. To write as Vasily Grossman, that is what I aspire to do. Sometimes the point he is trying to make takes pages of writing to understand, with poetic philosophy and thoughts.
"What can I say about people? They amaze me as much by their good qualities as by their bad qualities. They are all so different, even though they must undergo the same fate. But then if there's a downpour and most people try to hide, that doesn't mean that they're all the same. People even have their own particular ways of sheltering from rain."
Other times, the point is so blunt and right in front of you, you don't even notice it's there at first. And then you realise the truth in what you just read.
"The conditions the Jews lived in were terrible; and they were neither saints nor villains, they were human beings."
"We Russians, for some reason, are never allowed to be proud of our own people."
The last thing to discuss is, of course, the story and the plot itself. I'm a bit obsessed with historical fiction, so this fit right in. Everything happening in this story is so heartbreaking, and yet you can see these characters filled with hope and happiness even in the darkness.
Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.
I have a lot more favourite quites, but I can't fit in all of them here :( And I can't really say anything else, this is something you have to experience for yourself.
Just pure wonder.
So acutely and perfectly observed, a testament to the minutiae of existence. Horrific and sublime. To be lived, not merely read.
DNF @ page 202. Couldn’t find the motivation to continue reading it as it kept jumping between different people’s ‘stories’ and I found it hard to sit and read more than a few pages at a time. I do hope to come back to this book and finish it because I did really enjoy some parts of the book.
adventurous
challenging
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Great Great book. One feels the mental anguish each character goes through along the journey. The journey from the time of loss to the time of victory that the battle for Stalingrad represented. Many of the characters are Jewish so the feeling of patriotism coupled with the knowledge that they are second class in Soviet Russia, this juxtaposition of faith in country and faith in their God make for great angst. The suffering that was Russia during the Great Patriotic War can be felt in these pages. This leads to my one complaint. One of the main characters, Victor a physicist, spends page after page bemoaning his fate both good and bad. by page 650 one wants him to just get over it already. Look old man, Toya is dead, being a Jew in Russia is terrible, being a Jew under Stalin is better than under Hitler, and Stalin will die before the last purge, the purge of the Jews happens, so please, please just shut up. The good point is that within a page or two the scene changes and Victor is not heard from for awhile. Only complaint. other wise this is one fantastic book. Especially the scenes in house 1/6. Just wonderfully written. Grossman is an heir to Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Lermontov.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes