Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post
I hear you there. I tried reading Lenin's Tomb not long after it came out, and managed to get about a third of the way through. If that.

I've read Lermontov, I've read Zamyatin, I've read Ivan Denisovich, but Lenin's Tomb really did feel like a stone vault fell over on me.
Worst case of this I've had is last year when I attempted a book called Dreamfall, which looked like a nice sort of grimly romantic late eighties/early nineties sci-fi. Which it was, but holy cow was it depressing. Not beautifully sad, or over-the-top flowery misery, or soft melancholy, just flat-out life sucks people are crap depressing. Really good, but I didn't have the stomach for it at the time. Maybe next summer after my sixteen hour Ph.D. exam of death I'll drink a bit too much wine and sit around beside the lake finishing the damn thing and feeling thoroughly like crap.

So now I'm rereading Song of Achilles, which is sad, beautiful, and with absolutely gorgeous prose. Also delightfully and unabashedly homoerotic.