Struggling

I am reading a book for the Reading Circle of the Texas Tech Osher Lifelong Learning Institute http://www.depts.ttu.edu/outreach/.  The books we read expand my horizon, as I generally only read mysteries, unless another book comes highly recommended to me. 

This month, the group will be discussing Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier. I have struggled to read this book.  There are several reasons.  First, as most of us probably admit to, the variations of Russian names for one person is confusing.  Not unfathomable, but confusing.

Second, the author has a mishmash style:  Sometimes he uses "here we have;" sometimes he uses capitals and blocks of data. His grammatical style is often obtuse, very much what I would think might occur if someone was translating from Russian, and not doing it very well.

Third: There are multiple chronologies in the book. Some make sense, but many do not.

I am in hopes of completing this book before the discussion group next week, but if that does not happen, it does not happen.