Gulag Archipeligo was a long dry read. Got through half of it. Anne Applebaum’s was the same.
I had the same experience. One of my problems was long Russian names. I reverted to reviews and it was obvious this was a greta historical work.
” ‘Gulag Archipelago’ was a long dry read, Got through half of it.”
It was long, yes. Dry? I did not think so. I read it all the way through. Sometimes I had to stop reading for a while to absorb the human tragedy it recorded, and to recover my emotional equilibrium. The ‘dry’, quiet, matter-of-fact tone of the translation of the 3 volumes of history I read was, I think, deliberate. ‘This is not a sensational, action packed, pathos racked story; this is how things were; this is what we did to each other and to ourselves.’