Man, if I could drop a 3.75 bomb on this tome, I'd do it for sure. It was pretty uninteresting until the last quarter of the book when suddenly, Pamuk becomes this engaging, web-spinning, insect-sucking spider of a novelist. I just mean that it gets good at the end.

Pamuk describes things exceptionally evocatively and in the case of 'Snow,' it is actually quite beautifully executed. Maybe some people get dragged down in the descriptions (my coworker did, but she read it in Turkish) but they are worth the effort.

Pamuk also manages to take on a number of themes and incorporates a huge number of personalities in this book. So while the book is set in Kars, a forgotten provincial town on the end of the world (or the edge of Turkey,) a huge assortment of characters pass in and out of the book.

I guess you could sort of tell that this guy Pamuk is a great writer (won the Nobel Prize... ehh.. maybe that was a stretch and then again, maybe not. I'm just not sure what a Nobel writer is like... Anyway, I digress) and it was definitely a good read... but... I just feel like somethings don't come together for a full 4 stars. (In my personal ranking system, five stars = life-changing.)