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Completed	January 2011
Title	Doctor Zhivago
Author	Boris Pasternak
Published	1958
Quote	"It had been the dream of his life to write with an originality so covert, so discreet, as to be outwardly unrecognisable in its disguise of current, customary forms of speech. All his life he had struggled after a language so reserved, so unpretentious as to enable the reader or the hearer to master the content without noticing the means by which it reached him. All his life he had striven to achieve an unnoticeable style, and had been appalled to find how far he still remained from his ideal. Last night he had tried to convey, by means so simple as to be almost faltering and bordering on the intimacy of a lullaby, his feeling of mingled love and anguish, fear and courage, in such a way that it should speak for itself, almost independently of the words."
Review	On the dust jacket of this book, the marketing propaganda states that the book is "one of the greatest love stories ever told." But tell me, please, how can you call it a "great love story" when the story embraces nothing but adultery and deceit? What's so great about that? This book was sheer disappointment. Many, many times before, I had seen the 1965 movie with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. I loved the citiscape depictions in the movie, and the rough-and-tumble Russian countryside. I love the snowy scenes, and the time period. But this book is nothing like the movie. It is worse.

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