I want to appreciate life the way Ivan Denisovich Shukov does.

I want to take pride in my work; I want to taste every bite of sausage, suck the marrow out of every fish bone, enjoy every puff of every cigarette, bask in a sunset, watch the moon cross the sky, fall asleep content; I want focus on the necessities of living, but I have too much. It's not much compared to most everyone I know, but it is still too much.

And because it is too much I can't appreciate life the way Ivan Denisovich Shukov does. Reading about it is not enough, but right now it is what I have.

I'll keep trying.

This Nobel Prize-winning novel tells the story of labourers in a Russian work camp. One of its most effective traits is its ability to make the reader recognize similarities between the workers' and the reader's lives, even though for those in the camp, things are far worse. In the tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and a very enjoyable read apart from its social message. I particularly liked the way Solzhenitsyn uses a narrator who is a common worker, unlike the highly educated characters of his other books.