This Just Read: Some Short Stories

In conjunction with another book I'm reading (R. Andrew Wilson's Write Like Hemingway), I just read a few of Ernest Hemingway's better-known short stories in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. I read "The Killers," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." I've read them all before, but I enjoyed them thoroughly this time around.

Ernest Hemingway once said "the writer's job is to tell the truth." I thought that was supposed to be my job, but sometimes I wonder. Maybe I need to get a sampler cross-stitched of that quote for my office wall.

In Progress: The Brothers Karamazov

I've been posting my thoughts on books that I've actually finished. This is just a progress report on a book I've been reading for some months--between other reading projects. It's Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. I was supposed to read it in college, but [gasp!] didn't. I'm about 30% of the way into it, and so far I've not really bonded with any of the characters. Not one of them. It doesn't bode well.

I'm sticking with it for the time being, however. With Russian literature, persistence is sometimes necessary. It took me several false starts to get through Anna Karenina, and I'm glad I didn't give up.