The Death of Ivan Ilyich--finished

I finished off The Death of Ivan Ilyich tonight. I am not sure when I last or even when I first read this book. I might have been during high school or maybe college. Anyway it has been on my shelf for a long time, too long to have not been re-read. It is kind of funny or maybe errie in how easy it is to relate Ivan Ilyich to a person today. Someone who is basically making middle class money but trying to live an upper class or high society life. Someone whose life is full of details like work, society living, redocorating and just in general doing what is expected of people in their position rather than even trying to think about what should be important in life. I don't think I am living that shallow life, but true self inspection is hard to do. Ivan I couldn't do it until on his death bed.

I also found it interesting that he gave little thought to dying before he became sick. I think this too is something very common of people today. I also thought it interesting how Tolstoy basically kept religion out of the story. I believe Tolstoy was highly religious and am guessing this was done on purpose to maybe show people how important religion should be. I bet the intro of thirty some pages probably covered this, I wasn't able to fight through that. I think I made it 2 pages and realized if I wanted to read this book, the intro wasn't going to happen.

This book is a nice small taste of Tolstoy. I want to read one of his other books, probably War & Peace now. I doubt it will be next but I think soon, at least starting before the end of the year. No idea on the next book though. I am still working on Alligator, I think somewhere around halfway read.