During the siege, they ate their books.
I have a confession to make: sometimes I can’t meet my reading target of one book a week. There are weeks when I carry a book around with every intention of reading it, and dutifully open it while I’m having coffee, but don’t get to finish it for one reason or another. The operative word is “dutifully” — if reading feels like a duty, my brain will not cooperate. It’s not the author’s fault or even mind: you just have to be in the mood for certain books. So no hard feelings, Leo Tolstoy, and thanks for the exercise. Lugging War and Peace helped to tone my arm muscles.
There are some weeks when I can read three books without trying, and they make up for the weeks of zero.
For years I’ve been fascinated with
There are a number of excellent recent non-fiction books on the Stalin era: I recommend In The Court of The Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore and its prequel, Young Stalin. In these biographies the grim grayness is marinated in blood; critics have rightfully compared them to The Godfather I and II. Young Stalin probably sold out its first run on the basis of its cover: a photo of Joseph Stalin in his 20s. He looks um...how shall I put this...handsome. This man killed more people than Hitler, and he had...charm. But that’s how monsters work.
Curious about life in contemporary
I ended up with three books: Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov, City of
Death and the Penguin is the story of Viktor, a struggling writer whose only friend is Misha the penguin. He adopted Misha when the zoo, being unable to feed its penguins, gave them away. Writer and penguin lead a quiet life in
Kurkov has a deadpan, matter-of-fact style that never strains for effects. The kinship between man and penguin is portrayed in such an unsentimental manner that it becomes quite moving. Violence when it transpires is dealt with quickly, without gory passages and macho posturing. You get the impression that violence is imminent, so you’re constantly on edge. Novels with animal characters usually can’t resist emotional blackmail — you find yourself crying, Please don’t hurt the animal! — but Kurkov respects his characters too much to wring cheap tears out of their plight. Death and the Penguin is a funny, oddly touching novel that makes the surreal seem normal.
City of
A lone German paratrooper falls out of the sky, dead, and teenagers loot the body. One of them is 16-year-old Lev Beniov, who is arrested and taken to prison, where he expects to be shot any moment. Instead he gets tossed into a cell with Kolya, a deserter from the army. In the morning the two are set free on the condition that they find a dozen fresh eggs for the colonel’s daughter’s wedding cake. Whereupon the novel reveals itself to be a buddy movie in which the awkward teen has tragicomic adventures with the soldier, who happens to be tall, handsome, brave, funny, fearless, and literary. Benioff’s book is screaming to be made into a movie; I would cast Shia LaBeouf and Marat Safin (if he puts down his racquet).
I enjoyed City of
I started reading Pravda yesterday and I’m not sure I can finish it, but I’ve found an alternate use for it. You open the book to any page, pick a sentence at random, and if it is overwritten, you take a shot of vodka. Let’s try it. “The naked body of this other human being entranced him, engrossed him, bewitched him like a river god rising in vapors of jasmine and myrrh with a different violin sonata for each of his senses.” You will be drunk in three pages.
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