Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Books written by Russian authors.
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Both of these volumes are perfect for a night spent inside in the warmth of the fireside. Easy to get lost in, they are easily finished in a sitting and just begging to be turned over in your head or discussed with your favourite bookish friend.
It is essentially Nadezhda’s account of her own suffering and her country’s under the murderous, oppressive force of a dictator’s relentless purges of all opposition. Of art and culture. Of intellectuals and anyone who got in his way or was inconvenient.
Live-streamed opera is where we first saw Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, which is based on the Pushkin novel. Even though we weren’t provided with subtitles to the Met’s production from 2007, the imagery and the music were capable of conveying the story in and of themselves. Whenever I see fall leaves in piles on the ground, I’m reminded of the set design. This is a review of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
The premise might be an old one, but what Pushkin does with it is worthy of praise. His writing flows with a concise clarity that is poetic in and of itself.
The Queen of Spades is a novella that is not too short and not too long. It’s a perfect short read for an afternoon or an evening, clocking in at approximately 82 pages including the prologue. The clarity of the prose and the flow of it make the reader nearly fly through it and want to finish it in one sitting if at all possible. This is a review of A. S. Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades.
I’ll always remember the hospital and the hospital basement as one of the settings of my childhood. I spent a lot of time there and listening to my mother’s stories of what it’s like to work in healthcare. This is a review of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward.
The narrative is a relatively simple one, but within it Dostoevsky’s writing really shines. This is a review of Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk.
It’s hard to believe that this year I find myself wishing for rain. We often sit on the sofa and watch the sky darken outside the window, waiting for thunderstorms, sighing when the clouds pass over and the earth under them has gotten no relief. The air remains humid but at the same time dusty and expectant. This is a review of Dostoevsky’s Demons.
A Story About A Real Man is about a man that actually existed — hence the title. Alexei Maresyev was a Soviet pilot that fought in the second world war and suffered a double amputation. This is a review of Boris Polevoy’s novel.
I actually have only been reading Russian literature for a short amount of time and how I started reading it is a bit of story in and of itself. This is a review of Dostoevsky’s The Landlady.
After three years I’ve learned that March can be a weird month in the snow belt. This is a review of three short novels from Turgenev.
