What are you currently reading?

[Papy Oli]

Wasn't me! Perhaps Mandryka?

oops... 
A quick search indicated you were bemoaning the lack of a quality translation for that book in 2014.
At least, you were keen to read it 

As you were     

[Kalevala]

English and Japanese versions of his short stories I have.

I remember reading his book Dead Souls ages ago and recall finding it quite eye opening [Still recall the part about the "Potemkin villages" being set up--and repeatedly moved along a river bank for Catherine the Great to feel like all was good under her rule.].

How did you like the books Manabu?

K

[Florestan]

I remember reading his book Dead Souls ages ago and recall finding it quite eye opening [Still recall the part about the "Potemkin villages" being set up--and repeatedly moved along a river bank for Catherine the Great to feel like all was good under her rule.].

Are you sure you read that in Dead Souls? I remember nothing of the sort in it.

[Florestan]

I still have Proust's Du Côté de chez Swann on the go but I really need to be in the right mood to dive back into it   

I'm exactly in the same situation but when , or even if, I will be in the right mood I cannot tell. It's been so long since I gave it up that I will have to start it over to make sense of it again.

[Kalevala]

Are you sure you read that in Dead Souls? I remember nothing of the sort in it.

I may be conflating it with a course that I was taking at the time.  I do remember reading years later that it never happened; in short, a myth.

K

[Florestan]

I may be conflating it with a course that I was taking at the time.  I do remember reading years later that it never happened; in short, a myth.

K

It may be a myth but it may as well have happened. In any case, se non è vero è ben trovato. 

[Florestan]

Hesitating between re-reading War and Peace and starting over In Search of Time Lost. My brain says the former, my heart says the latter. Decisions, decisions... 

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I remember reading his book Dead Souls ages ago and recall finding it quite eye opening [Still recall the part about the "Potemkin villages" being set up--and repeatedly moved along a river bank for Catherine the Great to feel like all was good under her rule.].

How did you like the books Manabu?

K

I love Gogol!

[Florestan]

I love Gogol!

He was a Russian nationalist and a Slavophile --- yet Taras Bulba, Dead Souls and The Government Inspector are as many devastating critiques of Russian life, values and politics.

[Florestan]

The only Russian writer with whose characters I can easily and willingly identify is Turgenev.

That is, beside Tolstoy's Pierre Bezuhov, Andrei Bolkonski, Natasha Rostova and Konstantin Levin.         

[DavidW]

The only Russian writer with whose characters I can easily and willingly identify is Turgenev.

That is, beside Tolstoy's Pierre Bezuhov, Andrei Bolkonski, Natasha Rostova and Konstantin Levin.         

Well, I'm glad to know that you don't identify with Raskolnikov! Interestingly, two characters on your short list had an arc that led them to embrace God.

[JBS]

I'm exactly in the same situation but when , or even if, I will be in the right mood I cannot tell. It's been so long since I gave it up that I will have to start it over to make sense of it again.

Just make yourself a cup of tea, and savor a madeleine as you sip on it and refresh your memory...

....and I realized as I wrote that, that I don't actually know what a madeleine is. A cookie or some baked good, obviously. If it is a cookie, then Proust's madeleine might be the most famous cookie in history.

ETA: by Wikipedia it's officially a sponge cake.

[SimonNZ]

Taking a deep breath and starting:

Well...after the headlong rush of Annie Jacobsen's brilliant-if-terrifying minute-by-minute- and sometimes second-by-second gaming out of a civilization-destroying nuclear exchange and granular detail of the people, processes and systems involved...I'll be wanting something a little different before going on to the next Baillie Gifford prize nominee (on Indonesia after the Second World War).

So finally getting around to Mrs Dalloway:

[AnotherSpin]

I may be conflating it with a course that I was taking at the time.  I do remember reading years later that it never happened; in short, a myth.

K

The story of Potemkin villages has various sources, though I don't recall it being in Dead Souls. But that's not important; for Russians, the tendency to present wishful thinking as reality is deeply ingrained. Examples are frequent and numerous. There are tales of soldiers being forced to paint dirty snow white in the winter and withered grass green in the summer ahead of a general's inspection at a military unit.

And yes, there's the tendency to mythologize reality. Today, Russians deny that they invaded Ukraine and are waging a dirty war, attacking cities and killing civilians. Not at all — they claim they came "to liberate people from Nazis".

[steve ridgway]

There are tales of soldiers being forced to paint dirty snow white in the winter and withered grass green in the summer ahead of a general's inspection at a military unit.

This is the general mentality of trying to impress higher authorities. When the Queen visited the university I was attending they painted all the corridors she was going to walk along and all those leading off that she would be able to see down. Just those. And bussed in a load of schoolchildren who were given flags to wave in case no university students showed up. That's what I heard anyway .

[AnotherSpin]

This is the general mentality of trying to impress higher authorities. When the Queen visited the university I was attending they painted all the corridors she was going to walk along and all those leading off that she would be able to see down. Just those. And bussed in a load of schoolchildren who were given flags to wave in case no university students showed up. That's what I heard anyway .

Of course. I also tidied up the scattered garments in the apartment and washed the piles of dishes in the sink before my wife came back from the dacha.

[Mandryka]

This is the general mentality of trying to impress higher authorities. When the Queen visited the university I was attending they painted all the corridors she was going to walk along and all those leading off that she would be able to see down. Just those. And bussed in a load of schoolchildren who were given flags to wave in case no university students showed up. That's what I heard anyway .

Decorators say that the Queen never knew what fresh air smells like, because wherever she went, they'd just painted.

[JBS]

I suspect the phenomenon was known in Victorian England.

[hopefullytrusting]

Intense and mind-altering: Adams's Fundamentals of Game Design:



A testament to the power of technical communication.

Doubling-up. Salen and Zimmerman's Rules of Play.



Also, going to be going on a massive book spending spree tonight, hopefully.

[JBS]

Doubling-up. Salen and Zimmerman's Rules of Play.



Also, going to be going on a massive book spending spree tonight, hopefully.

Looking forward to a full debriefing.