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I really like the way you match books with music

Thanks Ladan! ;) I hope some of them to your liking :^)

Oh yes he did :) The natural, almost mundane style he employs here works wonders too! Ivan is actually not that different from the potential 21th-century reader :)

P.E. Interesting comments on the Tolstoy novella. My own view was that Ivan was especially smug, just rather intractably locked into the role he played in life, probably like many if not most men of his class in Russia 150 years ago, give or take a few years. Later in life, Tolstoy seemed to care much more about class struggle but he was quite young when he wrote this wonderful, brief tale. Bill

At the same time, after reading this general history of Russia, I wonder whether that model was much challenged: perhaps many lost their heads over the tchin, with its common hierarchy for military officers and public servants, allowing them to wear decorations, perhaps not to feel that concerned with other people without rank... Well at least that official materialism and conformism are much derided in The Nose, the Coat, the Nevsky Avenue by Nikolai Gogol, Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky, and their pretensions exposed in certain short stories by Chekhov, right! ;)

How do you mean, "Read in Florence, Italy" ?! Do you mean you had gotten so tired and bored with sightseeing the beautiful Florence that you had preferred to go instead for reading The Death of Ivan Ilitch? :D

Hey Mihaela ;) Thanks for asking! That's right, I read it on the plane and during the evenings at the hotel ;) I felt not bored one bit the rest of the time ;) Be it the monuments, the roadsigns, the shopkeepers, the sights, it was all quite captivating ;)

Sometimes I like to leave a note or something in the review that serves as a reminder of the time, place and personal condition when the book was read :) It has a mighty effect on how I view the book proper!

P.E. wrote: "Hey Mihaela ;) Thanks for asking! That's right, I read it on the plane and during the evenings at the hotel ;) I felt not bored one bit the rest of the time ;) Be it the monuments, the roadsigns, t..."

o, I feel much better now. Thank you :)) I really thought that you turned a blind eye on Florence for Ivan Ilytch :D
Okay, plane and sleep reading it's just fine and even welcome. However evenings in Florence does not match with reading this dynamite work! Why didn't you choose something more glorious instead? :D

P.E. wrote: "Sometimes I like to leave a note or something in the review that serves as a reminder of the time, place and personal condition when the book was read :) It has a mighty effect on how I view the bo..."

Very interesting approach. I like it very much.
So, how was the personal condition vs that of Ivan Ilytch's? :D
I hope it was just in the opposite extreme :))

Difficult period in my young years but I felt pretty graced to be alive in this specific moment ;)

Oh, I just saw your first question now on the phone app! Why The Death of Ivan Illich? Well, I was just beginning to be keen on reading Russian to get familiarized with the language, so I told myself: why not learning a thing or two about Russian while on a trip in Italy with my family on the father side? ;)

P.E. wrote: "Difficult period in my young years but I felt pretty graced to be alive in this specific moment ;)"

Oh, I am sorry to hear but I am glad that it is long over now. Present is anyway most important, as always ;)
I blush to think of the ‘madnesses� of my own younger years and wish I could recall and ‘burn� them :D
Of course, it’s not possible so I made peace with them.

Wise decision if you ask me :)

P.E. wrote: "Oh, I just saw your first question now on the phone app! Why The Death of Ivan Illich? Well, I was just beginning to be keen on reading Russian to get familiarized with the language, so I told myse..."

Thank you for your reply! I appreciate it :) Well, you really chose yourself a difficult subject for your first book in Russian, if that happened to be. For me I would have picked up something fun or light. Something with plenty of dialogue because it is easier to learn new words and expressions. Even to fancy myself mimicking their words� The Death of Ivan Ilych is a great work but too sober for my taste whilst enjoying a trip abroad :)
Interesting. Do you mean to say you have an international family ;) Good thing!

P.E. wrote: "Wise decision if you ask me :)"

Thank you!! :))

I merely made this trip with my father, stepmother and "half" brother and sister (I don't have a "full" brother or sister for that matter, by the way :D)

Actually my first book in Russian must have been Gogol's Petersburg Tales ;) Lighter, although we are never that far from pettiness and grimness in Gogolandia ;)

Succinct - and all the more powerful for that.

Thank you very much, Cecily! At the time, I was a bit lost for words, after being dealing such a blow... The Russian text is wonderful, I felt all the ups and downs, all the different moods chasing one another in Ivan's spirit. So much so that I ended up sympathizing with him, however despicable he seemed to me from the reputation he has at the beginning of the novel or from the thoughts he harbours through most of the novella.