Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol. November 2006. rating: 5

btw, Dead Souls = 5.

I commented about TBK saying that I wasn't used to authors directly addressing the reader, and wondered if that was Dostoevsky's style or that time period's style or what. well, Pushkin did it, and Gogol did it, so it wasn't just Dostoevsky. I'm not sure it is any better of a way to write a story, but I do tend to react to it. it's as if you start the book and it reads, "oh, there you are, dear reader; perhaps you have been mightily put upon in recent days that you are just now getting around to this humble text. no, no, don't let such trifling little things trouble your soul in the least. on the contrary, your kind attention has warmed the heart of this narrator overwhelmingly; why, where else on all of God's earth could there be found a more suitable, a more capable, a more endeavoring reader than yourself? come, come, let the two of us begin our adventure, quite as the two heroes in our story began theirs on such a wintry day..." [going on to tell a story about two heroes on a wintry day] ;)

Nikolai Gogol is grand at sarcasm, a marvel at satire, with a positively resplendent wit. of course he also wrote the play The Grand Inquisitor, and everyone's heard of that, and is quite aware of the nature of it, so I'm just pouring water into the ocean, I'm sure. one story of his I also have to track down is The Nose. about a lowly officer who wakes up missing his nose (no wound; it's just gone), and sets out looking for it, and when he finally does find it, it won't talk to him because even his own nose is of higher rank than he is. lol. this is my kind of author.

that nose story actually sounds about like a dream I had of my daughter... I dreamt I was helping her change her pants, and had to prompt her for every little motion. at one point I was lifting her leg up to help her step into her pants, and her leg just came off. no wound or anything. you know those cheap plastic babydolls whose arms and legs pop in and out? it was like that--- only it was a real leg, not plastic; it was actually her leg. it just popped out! I sat there staring at her leg, and she was apparently oblivious to the whole thing. in fact, she kept trying to walk off, and she kept falling over; and she didn't seem to notice anything as she just tried to walk off again. girl, you only have one leg! after I got my wits about me, I managed to pop it back in, and she walked off, oblivious, without her pants even. and I thought to myself, there is more going on with her than we know! lol

and that concludes my bookreport. :p