Reading is the pleasant and useful part of our life. People like reading. I think so because a lot of books are bought and sold every day in different bookshops and in streets (or: outside) too. Of course, radio and television are more popular among people but books still play an important role for us. Reading enriches our mind. It can satisfy many different demands and literary tastes. It reveals to us its own world of life, which is sometimes cruel or sorrowful and sometimes is joyful or fantastic.

Speaking about reading I can’t help saying about my favourite writer. He is one of the most famous Russian authors of the 19th century – Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov.

His life was momentary and blinding as a gleam of lightning in a stormy sky.

Not having lived till 27 years old, he passed the entire circle of life with flights of inspiration and bitterness of disappointments. He went through many troubles in his life: great success and two exiles, disappointments and love, smoke of battles and intrigues of a high society.. And died in thunderstorm… This is the entire circle.

Just two latest figures changed their places in the dates of his life. But how many emotions were experienced by him and what antagonism of ideas existed in his mind and soul!

I like novels, stories and poems by Mikhail Lermontov very much. Needless to say that the most part of the poems and almost all novels and stories are full of melancholy – this is the particularity of his works.

No doubt, all of us have read his poems at school and of course have got acquainted with “The Hero of Our Time”. In this novel through the heroes Lermontov tried to express his own sense of time and events.

The main character is Grigoriy Alexandrovich Pechorin – an individualist with a conflict in his sole. He disdains a high society and searches for a real affair, where he could apply his skills and his talents, where he could put his soul. But he doesn’t find such an affair and suffers from it.

Pechorin is a deep character. He is like his author, a man who searches for real life, deep feelings, true love and feels useless in his time.

Lermontov never wrote non-fiction. All his compositions are made-up but a great part of them is connected with real events of the 19th and other centuries. There is no humor in his works, they are deep and full of the author’s thoughts. They reflect the problems of the society and make us think. That is why I like them very much and enjoy every minute, reading books by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov.