Doctor Zhivago

"I wanted to like this book, I really did. It's my dad's favorite, he says it's the best thing he ever read and he got our names (Nadia and Larissa) from it. Even my book-hating sister Larissa loved it, but I'm just not smart enough for this book.<br/><br/>There were some sections where I got into the story and was hooked and then just as easily, I was bored. I think I'm just too spoiled to the point where I have a hard time reading classics. Maybe if I had read it in Spanish it would have gone a bit better, but I doubt it. Again I say, I'm not smart enough for Russian Lit.<br/><br/>I couldn't relate to Yuri or Lara. They were just not impressive characters to me. Lara was sort of a whiner. She didn't come off as a strong woman, even though she endured so much in her life. She always wanted someone else to make the decisions for her. And I never believed Yuri's "love story", to me he was just a man cheating on his wife. Then they said they both still loved their spouses. I didn't believe it. Whoever said this book was the greatest love story was wrong. This book is about Russia and that's about it. I did learn some things about the Russian Revolution and those things were very eye-opening, but you'd have to be interested in Russian history to really enjoy it.<br/><br/>Some people have complained about how confusing the names are, but that didn't bother me. It's really easy to know what they mean once you're used to the format (e.g. eshka, oshka, enka are diminutives added at the end of the names. Nadieshka means "Little Nadia." Larissa Feodorovna- Feodorovna being the maiden name meaning "Daughter of Feodor." Antivopa meaning "Wife of Antipov").<br/><br/>Yuri's poetry is not even that great either. <br/><br/>I'm considering my finishing this book a success though, and now when someone asks me if I've read Zhivago, I can say "Why, yes I have!""

"I love the language. "

"I read this because I recently finished “The Secrets We Kept,” which talks a lot about Pasternak’s writing of this book, the love affair between him and his inspiration for Lara, and how the book eventually got published outside of Russia and smuggled back in. I wanted to like the actual than I did. The history of the book is so interesting, but the actual plot is kind of slow, and I didn’t find myself cheering for the characters. That being said, the transition was beautiful and his descriptions of the frozen Russian landscape during a time of upheaval was wonderful."