Seems like this took me 7 months to read. It got recalled to the library a few times and also sat around my place unread during a few periods where I was too flighty to read such a weighty book. But in truth, there was a lot of humour here and a lot of really great experiments in short and mid-length (novella) fiction. I didn't like all of it--the last, very long piece, "Haji Murat" wasn't my thing, and I actually skipped a few pages of "Master and Man" because it was so godawful sad. But I read "The Death of Ivan Illych" three times and really loved "The Forged Coupon." Definitely worth the time investment and I'm glad I stuck with it.