I'm sort of leaning towards the long version, since honestly I'm not sure how I haven't read them before with my interest in the Soviets and all.
What I do wonder from someone who has read them, is are they actually good to read? Someone else mentions them being "postgraduate level", so is it one of those things that's extremely long and complicated reading that just wears you down? Sometimes things that are supposedly for "educated" people seem more like a hundred hours of word salad to pick through. Although at the very least it's a more modern book as usually the ones I can never get into are older. I'd rather succeed at an abridged version over failing to finish at all.
I just finished Volume 2. It should be required reading in all high schools, as I heard it is in Russia currently.
I laughed a few times. Both from the author's humour and from the absolutely absurd incidents Solzhenitsyn recounts about certain situations. It's a very interesting read. You'll learn a lot about how Soviet citizens lived, Soviet ideology, how gulags were like of course. The books will make you appreciate the horror of what happened. I knew it was bad before reading these books. You can't imagine how bad it was. Gotta read it.
I'm sort of leaning towards the long version, since honestly I'm not sure how I haven't read them before with my interest in the Soviets and all.
What I do wonder from someone who has read them, is are they actually good to read? Someone else mentions them being "postgraduate level", so is it one of those things that's extremely long and complicated reading that just wears you down? Sometimes things that are supposedly for "educated" people seem more like a hundred hours of word salad to pick through. Although at the very least it's a more modern book as usually the ones I can never get into are older. I'd rather succeed at an abridged version over failing to finish at all.
I just finished Volume 2. It should be required reading in all high schools, as I heard it is in Russia currently.
I laughed a few times. Both from the author's humour and from the absolutely absurd incidents Solzhenitsyn recounts about certain situations. It's a very interesting read. You'll learn a lot about how Soviet citizens lived, Soviet ideology, how gulags were like of course. The books will make you appreciate the horror of what happened. I knew it was bad before reading these books. You can't imagine how bad it was. Gotta read it.