65. Russian literature
I've never read much Russian literature, other than a few short stories or novellas during high school in the early 1990s. My general impression of the classic works since that time is that they're exceptionally long, with too many characters, and sometimes bleak. I think this is mostly inaccurate if the full range of output from all the 19th and early 20th authors is considered.
I have plenty of time to read here in St. Petersburg - I spend approximately 2.5 hours a day on my round-trip commute from Tolstoy House in the city center to my office at the far northern end of St. Petersburg. It's a combination of walking to one of the nearby Metro stations, taking one or two Metro lines between four and eight stops (depending on which lines I'm on and what route I want to take), walking a short distance to where the corporate shuttle picks us up, and then riding on the bus a few miles to the office (and the whole route in reverse at the end of the day).
The Metro and bus portions of the commute give me the opportunity to average 40-80 pages per day, depending on what type of book I'm working through (modern science fiction is quicker than 19th century prose, for example). And that doesn't include the additional page count from reading in restaurants or at home before I go to sleep. There is no time better than when I'm living in Russia to read Russian literature, with my particular emphasis on books written by St. Petersburg authors that also take place in the city.
Here is a list of the works I've read so far since I moved to Russia (all in English translation, of course). The first nine are short stories or novellas and the last is a novel. The links below take you to my reviews on Goodreads --
01) Alexander Pushkin - The Queen of Spades
02) Nikolai Gogol - The Nose
03) Nikolai Gogol -The Carriage
04) Anton Chekhov - A Nervous Breakdown
05) Anton Chekhov - The Black Monk
06) Anton Chekhov - Anna Round the Neck
07) Fyodor Dostoevsky - White Nights
08) Fyodor Dostoevsky - Bobok
09) Leonid Andreyev - Seven Hanged
10) Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
I'm also currently in the middle of "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevsky, but I expect that will take me a few more months to finish. I'd like to read more by Pushkin, and also try Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Lermontov, and Turgenev. So it seems that my general verdict is that I'm a fan! I do plan to continue to read Russian authors even when I'm no longer living here.
I have plenty of time to read here in St. Petersburg - I spend approximately 2.5 hours a day on my round-trip commute from Tolstoy House in the city center to my office at the far northern end of St. Petersburg. It's a combination of walking to one of the nearby Metro stations, taking one or two Metro lines between four and eight stops (depending on which lines I'm on and what route I want to take), walking a short distance to where the corporate shuttle picks us up, and then riding on the bus a few miles to the office (and the whole route in reverse at the end of the day).
The Metro and bus portions of the commute give me the opportunity to average 40-80 pages per day, depending on what type of book I'm working through (modern science fiction is quicker than 19th century prose, for example). And that doesn't include the additional page count from reading in restaurants or at home before I go to sleep. There is no time better than when I'm living in Russia to read Russian literature, with my particular emphasis on books written by St. Petersburg authors that also take place in the city.
Here is a list of the works I've read so far since I moved to Russia (all in English translation, of course). The first nine are short stories or novellas and the last is a novel. The links below take you to my reviews on Goodreads --
01) Alexander Pushkin - The Queen of Spades
02) Nikolai Gogol - The Nose
03) Nikolai Gogol -The Carriage
04) Anton Chekhov - A Nervous Breakdown
05) Anton Chekhov - The Black Monk
06) Anton Chekhov - Anna Round the Neck
07) Fyodor Dostoevsky - White Nights
08) Fyodor Dostoevsky - Bobok
09) Leonid Andreyev - Seven Hanged
10) Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
I'm also currently in the middle of "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevsky, but I expect that will take me a few more months to finish. I'd like to read more by Pushkin, and also try Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Lermontov, and Turgenev. So it seems that my general verdict is that I'm a fan! I do plan to continue to read Russian authors even when I'm no longer living here.
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