Doctor Zhivago

                                           

I must admit that I was disappointed when I finished reading this book.  To begin with I had a hard time reading it straight through, I had to take breaks and look at something else for a while, and in the end I made myself finish it.  I had expectations.  I was biased perhaps.  I had heard so much of this wonderful movie (which I have not seen yet, and seriously doubt if I will), and the book itself was referenced in certain other movies making me believe that this was some great Russian epic which was romantic and beautiful.
There was the potentiality there...I liked some passages (which incidentally were not about Zhivago),  but the politics (or as I think of it to myself, the historical lesson / social commentary) actually detracted from this already weak story about a weak man who was, in my opinion, repugnant.  Honestly, at the end I didn't even have the stomach to read the poetry collection, I just wanted to distance myself from this character. 
Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, perhaps if I watched the movie I might see it differently.  I know there is still much that I don't know about Russia, and I haven't read nearly as much of it's literature as I wish to.  It is a work in progress.  But when you have masters like Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol,  Solzenitsyn, and Bulgakov, who provoke deep emotions of  awe, wonder and even tears, I want to know, whats so damn special about this book?