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After Half of a yellow sun i was left clueless as for what to read next, because Juan José Saer’s El entenado isn’t in libraries in my vicinity (not that it’s a big problem as I will probably buy it in some time) and I didn’t feel like reading other historical novels recommended just yet, so I first read Gogol’s Dead Souls because i guess i wanted to read something funny.
I had my expectations met (I loved it) however i didn’t escape disappointment because my book edition was exclusively part one, without any mentions of part two existence too…
Gogol even mentions that this isn’t the end of his epic poem but without any note by the publisher I was left thinking “Well he sure failed to write even a page more since I just read the book from beginning to end”.
So now I know that Chichikov wasn’t done with his adventures, there were clues for me to find well before typing “Dead souls” into Wikipedia to find what I was unknowingly missing and let me tell you it was a unpleasant feeling at the back of my head all the way.
Like reviews that talked about weaker part 2 were suspicious but I enjoyed first half of the book 1 (when intentions of the main character are deeply hidden, with only the slightest of cracks exposed little by little) more then the later chapters and as that weird arrow paradox proves you can divide anything into increasingly smaller parts so I just mistakenly divided in my mind part 1 into part 1: part 1 and part 1: part 2 keeping me in the dark.
I also saw a post in this thread by @wickedcestus about dead souls that described a scene I didn’t remember so having just put down the book I had realised that something was wrong (since I didn’t read part 2 and found that scene it what’s wrong might be my memory) and was relived of my doubts with aforementioned google search.
I guess that what can be taken as a lesson from my experience is that: publishers can and will play with your emotions by printing a book for as little money as possible (without foreword, publishing a dated translation).
Until I will read the rest of the book to get broader view I will say that I really loved the narrator of the story and it reminded me of self-aware beginning of Lu Xun’s True Story of A Q of all things (actually I would be happy to hear about more stories with this trait), but the ending of book 1 was more in tone of preaching then rather sincere and humble voice of a storyteller, I hope Gogol went back to that idea in book 2.
It’s weird for me to look at this post and find that what started as a short note on my silly mistake (and supposed to be a little joke, a appetiser before writing about Waiting for The Barbarians that I have read in its entirety (this time for real)) outweighed any prior premise so now I will split this post about book 1 of Dead souls into two posts.
Anyway stay tuned for part 2 of this long review, unless I will not be happy with how it turned out and will burn it down following a suggestion from a clerygyman of choice.
PS. And you can wait for the barbarians too…
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Me
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you’re THE insufferable gaucho?!
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*gacho's insufferably*
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anyone here use an ereader? I got a kobo to see if I would like it and honestly I really really do. It’s convenient and I just find myself very easily drawn into books on the device. I finished 2 books on my vacation using it and it was great. I always thought I could never use one because I like the physical feeling of a book but turns out I was just making assumptions about myself.
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I don’t like to recommend Spoitify, but there’s a quite good (fairly comprehensive!) 940 track playlist built off of music mentioned in the book that flows chronologically. It’s VAST.
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yeah I like my kobo a lot. Bought it to take backpacking to save weight and have ended up using it to read at night bc I like the soft light from the screen better than a lamp or a booklight
I been looking at a boox since they’re the new thing nowadays I think
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Which model did you get? I’m looking to buy one as a gift for someone, they have a kindle paperwhite but its kinda broken + amazon has made it difficult to load your own books in so I’ve been thinking of the kobo. The libra color one looks good.
I have a Boox Nova Air and I’m pretty happy with it. It has android on it so I can install some apps on it + it has bluetooth so I sometimes use it to listen to white noise while I read and stuff. Only downside to it is that it takes a bit more than the kindle to boot up everytime so it’s not as instant. The build quality is quite durable, mine is still going strong after 3ish years. The new models look pretty good, might upgrade in a couple of years.
If it weren’t for my e-reader I straight up wouldn’t read as much. When the metro is full and I’m squished between people in my seat, its much better to hold the device in my hand than try to one-hand a book (depends on the size I guess but you know what I mean). Mine also has a bigger screen than the Paperwhite so I can read magazines and such on it pretty easily. Plus I can read in low light much easier with it than a book+booklight combo.
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ooo they’ve got little sketching pens?
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I have a Kobo that I’ve used near-daily since I bought it and I’ve read so, so many books on it. I put KOReader on it as well and did some things this past weekend so now I also read my RSS feeds (I sync these on-demand and leave the wifi off usually) and one-off web articles converted to EPUBs (via Pandoc and Syncthing) so almost all of my reading is done on my Kobo.
The thing I haven’t fully solved yet (working on it) is a way to highlight/annotate my books and get those notes into a format that is better for searching, quoting, and/or citing. Like I’ve been highlighting a variety of things in Socialism … Seriously but finding them again right now has much higher friction than just…sticky notes in a physical book.
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there’s backpacking in Illinois?
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I definitely considered one of these but there was something appealing about having a “dumb” device that is specifically meant for reading only vs an Android tablet with an eink screen.
@Bonsai I got lucky and found someone selling a Libra 2 on ebay. I wanted a b&w screen but Kobo doesn’t seem to make those anymore? The color eink screens seem to have mixed reviews and that’s all Kobo really has now.
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I also use a Kobo and it’s just the best–I still buy some physical books but those are mostly indie press/local press/zines or whatever; for big mass market releases it’s the best thing ever. Plus light novels and whatnot too
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(loudly and a little too suddenly) i don’t use an e-reader
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Interesting detail from the Beastie Boys Book - they paid for the gender transition of the record store owner who pressed their first single “Pollywog Stew” in the 80s, years later under the guise of back royalties.
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Been trudging along with a couple of books, struggling to get out of a reading slump:
- Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard [finished yesterday]
- Just Kids by Patti Smith [finished today]
- How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm [30 pages to go]
- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris
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I was using an e-reader almost exclusively for years, but I’ve been back on physical books since I’ve been in school. There’s just a lot of art books and academic books I don’t really have easy digital access to, and they’re right there in the library I also work in.
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I don’t use it quite as often as I did at one time, but I have a 15-year-old 2nd gen kindle that still works great - I wish all tech lasted that long
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