What are you currently reading?

[AnotherSpin]

There's also the question of whether the person reading is able to convey the book onto tape. Erofeeov is totally unknown to me, but I'm reminded of how sometimes composers are not the best conductors of their own works: despite the apparent authority of the performance, perhaps another person might do better.

You haven't missed anything, unless you're a heavy drinker or particularly interested in the Brezhnev-era Soviet cultural underground. Erofeev's reading is more than congenial.

[AnotherSpin]

My Top 20th Century Russian writers, no particular order:

Yevgeny Zamyatin
Mikhail Bulgakov
Boris Pasternak
Nadezhda Mandelstam
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Bulat Okudjava

Have not read yet but on my wishlist: Mikhail Sholokhov, Chingiz Aitmatov

In my past life, when I was still reading a lot of Russian-language authors of the 20th century, I was interested in Sergei Dovlatov, Georgy Ivanov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Osip Mandelstam, Nikolai Gumilev, Mikhail Bulgakov, Valentin Kataev, Yuri Olesha, Vladimir Nabokov, Ivan Bunin, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, Viktor Pelevin, Alexei Tolstoy, Vasily Aksyonov, Vladislav Khodasevich, Yuri Trifonov, Alexander Zinoviev, Vladimir Voinovich, Arkady Lvov. Of the relatively recent ones, Tatiana Tolstaya and Eduard Limonov were interesting. I'm probably forgetting someone.

I actively disliked Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsin, Varlam Shalamov, Andrei Platonov, and Strugatskys. I did not understand the enthusiasm around Daniil Kharms or Boris Pilnyak. Isaac Babel annoyed me. Read Vasily Grossman when he was published in Gorbachev's time, can't remember a word from him now.

[Florestan]

I actively disliked Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsin,

Why?

[Florestan]

Read Vasily Grossman when he was published in Gorbachev's time, can't remember a word from him now.

Life and Destiny is excellent, kind of a 20thC War and Peace.

[DavidW]

Life and Destiny is excellent, kind of a 20thC War and Peace.

It is still on my Kindle waiting to be read!  I buy books faster than I can read them.

[Florestan]

It is still on my Kindle waiting to be read!

Move it four or five positions up! Better still, start reading it right now!

[Florestan]

Now that I think of it, my favorite Russian classic is Turgenev, whom I prefer to both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Gentler, kinder, sunnier, more humane and last but not least --- much shorter.

[AnotherSpin]

Why?

It's purely subjective. Some peculiarity inherent in some Russian authors. Maybe it's not conveyed in translations, I don't know.

[AnotherSpin]

Now that I think of it, my favorite Russian classic is Turgenev, whom I prefer to both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Gentler, kinder, sunnier, more humane and last but not least --- much shorter.

If we're talking about the 19th century, for me it's Tolstoy and Gogol. Of course Pushkin, but even more so Lermontov.

[ritter]

It's been some years since I last read any Auden. Starting  The Age of Anxiety (which TBH seems a bit intimidating, but let's see).



And no, I am not approaching this because of the Bernstein connection... 

[Florestan]

It's purely subjective. Some peculiarity inherent in some Russian authors. Maybe it's not conveyed in translations, I don't know.

If I understand you correctly, you dislike them not that much for what they say as for how they say it —- please correct me if I'm wrong.

[AnotherSpin]

If I understand you correctly, you dislike them not that much for what they say as for how they say it —- please correct me if I'm wrong.

What, how, why and for whom.