(and my blog titles are starting to look like Panic! at the Disco song titles)
After struggling through my library books (The Screaming Staircase - Stroud; August and Then Some - Prete; Some Sing, Some Cry - Shange and Bayeza; The Magic of Saida - Vassanji; A Hundred Flowers - Tsukiyama) with a smattering of others (The Left Hand of Darkness - LeGuin; The Uncommon Reader - Bennett; two SciAms) I took on three books which I had borrowed from friends (Robot Visions - Asimov; Oryx and Crake - Atwood; Xenocide - Card) and subsequently returned (only to receive further books!!), and I am now partaking of the feast that is Doctor Zhivago. I reached 50% this morning (Kindle, why can't you count page numbers?).
My favorite thing about Pasternak is that he was a poet and wrote his prose in a very lyrical way. His similes are so inspiring that I am now irked at the lack of such in my own writings. I wonder if simile usage can be learned like improvisation or harmonizing in music, like a sublanguage that adds flavor and in which one can become truly fluent, without much conscious translation. Pasternak writes like it's the easiest thing, like leaving out simile would be like writing without adverbs.
Basically I would really have liked to meet him and he is definitely going on my list of Dead People I'd Invite To A Great Party.
