RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[quillpunk]

Time has continued ticking, and it is once more Wednesday.

What are you reading? 👀

Comments

Re: Current Readin

[goldentunes]

Re The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: is this a deliberate style that they've written in? I'm really intrigued now I can't imagine a book being published where an editor would have missed tons of basic mistakes!

(Same re fics. If I'm holding a paperback I handpicked out of thousands in the store, I always feel I must be missing something if I'm not really getting into it. DNFing (thread above) is not always easy!)

Re: Current Reading

[dialecticdreamer]

Unclear on my part, sorry. I can put down fanfics with grammar errors and spelling mistakes.

The errors in The Gulag Archipelago are either insufficient facts, misinterpretation of events, or overgeneralizing from the word-of-mouth information that he collected. The book about the Soviet Gulag system was written in a time when NO ONE in the general public could even get information that they existed. The trains weren't even labeled correctly on the official schedules.

So, the errors aren't the kinds of things which could be corrected in editing without destroying the impact of the Gulag system on the average citizen, even if they never actually crossed through a gate into one. Try to imagine someone collecting "this happened to me" autobiographical stories about the people living in Atlanta during the American Civil War, collected both during the war and for fifteen to twenty years afterward. Those are the errors that I meant.

Here's the part that makes me deeply respectful of the author: He's over 95% right. There may be errors in numbers, generalizing from what he saw on one day at one roll call, but this is still quite a terrifying look at a cotton gin that used up, chewed up, and never actually spit out citizens faster than it would raw cotton!

Re: Current Reading

[goldentunes]

Oh no! Sorry it was ME that was unclear - I can definitely put down fics. I do it very quickly actually. But it takes me longer to do the same with published books.

Gosh, that sounds like a tough read! While I can't say I've ever read anything similar, I have read books previously where I thought "why in the world am I doing this to myself", and then got to the end and immediately put the book on my "will rec to anyone list", so I'm hoping that The Gulag Archipelago will be worth it for you!

Re: Current Reading

[dialecticdreamer]

Books hit differently at different ages. For example, "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle. The first time that I read it, I was six or seven. I read it again in middle school, age twelve, and again when I set out on my own at seventeen. Each time, it felt like an entirely different novel.

Now, middle-aged and with grown children, I can see world history with a bit more interconnection, a bit less egocentric (or nation-centered) analysis, and most obviously, less "right" and "wrong" and more awareness of the complex gears and cogs in motion in any social problem.

I'd read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by the same author with my youngest in high school, and if you want the same clarity of vision and purpose but in a simplified format, read this instead. The struggle, the effect on people outside, is of necessity less important and more blurred to the characters.

So far, I'd say that the fictionalized story is great reading all on its own, but it also serves as a wonderful introduction to the more intricate, more explicitly terrible stories in "The Gulag Archipelago." It'll be worth it, even if I don't sleep well for a while.

Re: Current Reading

[goldentunes]

I’ll check One Day out, thank you!!