Chris Via > Recent Status Updates

This is seriously one of the best books I've ever read!

First book of October!

I'm going to force myself to drag these last 100 pages out. I don't want this book to end!

Finally! A piece of recent fiction that I am completely engrossed in, and that I don't want to finish. For anyone who loves literature (especially canonized Western lit.), or anyone who is/has been an English lit. major, this is a great read!

The "First Walk" sets the stage nicely for this work-in-exile.

This edition I picked up has a foreword by Mr. Pynchon!

"Diary of a Madman" is dismissible. "The Nose" was absurd--of course!--but ultimately a flop. I think I was hoping for something more like Kafka's "Metamorphosis," which is not the way to approach any single work of art. Oh, well. Let's hope the highly lauded "The Overcoat" is a good finish to this little collection.

Skipping around a bit. "The Carriage" is a playful tale that reminds me of O. Henry.

Skipping around a bit. "The Carriage" is a playful tale that reminds me of O. Henry.

This is my first brush with Gogol, and, so far, having only read one Ukrainian tale, I feel as if I'm reading a mashup of Goethe and Kafka!