The Library Lady’s Reviews > A Swim in a Pond in the Rain > Status Update

Tolstoy, he of “I-only-write-giant-epics” fame, wrote a story that is a mere ten pages.

I am now crying. It seems that no matter how good I think Tolstoy’s writing will be, it always ends up being better.

I find myself wanting to cry. The fact that Chekhov was an atheist makes his stories even more meaningful… I feel like I can almost see him groping for meaning in life through his stories, and it’s a very moving thing.

Now this, this, is why I am still reading this book despite the profusion of swearing. The commentary, swearing aside, is absolutely top-notch and really makes me think.

Here I was, sitting and thinking about how Russian lit stories always have a slow start, and then I open to this Gogol story where, within the first two pages, the MC discovers someone’s nose in his loaf of bread.

Someone’s nose.

In. His. Bread.

This is why Russian literature will never cease to amaze me. It grabs your expectations and hurls them out the window.

What a strange and lovely book. I have some disagreements with the author’s philosophy, but I still am loving it.

Oh, this book is delightful. Oh, this book is DELIGHTFUL. It gives you a page of a Russian lit story — a single page — and then discusses that page to death, FROM A READER’S PERSPECTIVE, not from a writer’s or English teacher’s. And then you move on to the next page and repeats.

And yes, I used all caps twice in the above because it’s just that good.