What are you currently reading?

[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.

[AnotherSpin]

[Florestan]

[SimonNZ]

Interesting. How do you rate that?

I have an instant attraction to anything Cambridge put into their Canto series.


TD: Finished:



and starting straight in to the next in Kynaston's sequence (his latest):

[foxandpeng]

Proust. Swann's Way. Journey through À la recherche du temps perdu, finally started.

I appreciate that this is a huge, descriptive work, so I'm buckled up for the entire ride. Having said that, the initial 200pp are dreadfully tedious.

[SimonNZ]

Proust. Swann's Way. Journey through À la recherche du temps perdu, finally started.

I appreciate that this is a huge, descriptive work, so I'm buckled up for the entire ride. Having said that, the initial 200pp are dreadfully tedious.

Ah, but this means you're about to start the "Swann In Love" section...

[vers la flamme]

Proust. Swann's Way. Journey through À la recherche du temps perdu, finally started.

I appreciate that this is a huge, descriptive work, so I'm buckled up for the entire ride. Having said that, the initial 200pp are dreadfully tedious.

I'm planning on reading this soon. Hope you find it less tedious as it goes on.

[Florestan]

Proust. Swann's Way. Journey through À la recherche du temps perdu, finally started.

I appreciate that this is a huge, descriptive work, so I'm buckled up for the entire ride. Having said that, the initial 200pp are it is dreadfully tedious.

There, fixed. 

[Mandryka]

Proust. Swann's Way. Journey through À la recherche du temps perdu, finally started.

I appreciate that this is a huge, descriptive work, so I'm buckled up for the entire ride. Having said that, the initial 200pp are dreadfully tedious.

I thought it was life changing. I've never been able to look at a white hawthorn tree in the same way since.

When you get to Sodom and Gemorrah there will be some  stuff to tickle your fancy more, maybe.

That being said you really must read Swann's Way because it contains THE key to the roman fleuve, the most important incident in a way. I won't tell you what it is, you'll find out in The Sweet Cheat Gone.

[Florestan]

Interesting. How do you rate that?

It's excellent. David M. Nicol was a pupil of Steven Runciman and it shows. He knows his primary sources inside out and is able to condense them in a very informative and well-written form, all the while carefully separating the wheat from the chaff. The result is a vivid portrait of the last Roman emperor and his entourage. Highly recommended.

[AnotherSpin]

Is there mention here of the curious development of subsequent events, whereby a predominantly Mongol-Tatar formation began to encroach on the role of the new Rome?