Books Read April 2022: 49-73

A gentle reminder that all reviews can still be seen on my Goodreads profile (the review will be with the book; the format will be specified unless it's in print.) And the books with green outlines are my 5-star reads for the month!

49. A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
50. Below Zero by Ali Hazelwood, read by Savannah Peachwood ⭐️⭐️⭐️
51. Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong, read by Ocean Vuong ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52. The Genius Under the Table by Eugene Yelchin   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
53. The Angel of Khan el-Khalili by P. Djeli Clark   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
54. Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
55. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djeli Clark, read by Julian Thomas ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
56. Woman, Eat Me Whole by Ama Asantewa Diaka   ⭐️⭐️⭐️
57. I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
58. By Any Other Name by Lauren Kate   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
59. Thresh & Hold by Marlanda Dekine   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
60. Wildcat by Ameila Morris   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
61. Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins, performed by Nina Collins, Cherise Boothe, Adenrele Ojo, Paula J. Parker, Desean Terry, and Dan Woren ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
62. Lord of the Flies by William Golding   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
63. The Path to Kindness by James Crews (ed.)   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
64. The Black Agenda by Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman (ed.)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
65. End of the World House by Adrienne Celt   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
66. The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae et al   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
67. A Sister's Story by Donatella di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
68. Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
69. Heartstopper by Alice Oseman   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
70. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, read by Miranda Raison ⭐️⭐️⭐️
71. Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson, read by M.T. Anderson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
72. A Master of Djinn by  P. Djeli Clark   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
73. Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
74. The Stone Collection by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Books read: 26

Audiobook: 6
Ebook: 11
Print: 9

Library: 6
TBR: 1
Purchased 2022: 5
Review copy: 11
Subscription: 1

1954- Club: 1
Around the World: 11
Booker International Prize: 0
Indigenous Reading Circle: 1
Indigenous Reads otherwise: 0
Melanated Reader's 20 Books by Black Women: 4
Mid-Century Women: 0
Reading Envy Russia: 5
Sword and Laser: 5
Tournament of Books: 0
Women's Prize: 0

Review: Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a feat of research and writing about Ukraine in the 1930s, and how Stalin's policies intentionally targeted Ukrainians, resulting in widespread famine and what many consider genocide. From collectivization to dekulakization, the author shows how Ukraine was stripped of its resources and culture and then punished further for not being able to provide more. I was shocked this time period is still highly debated/contested - largely by the Russian government - well shocked might be too strong of a word, after all Putin borrows from Stalin in categorizing Ukrainians as Nazis in order to justify his decisions.

For my tastes, there are so many names and so many details that the reading was sometimes a slog. However I don't know how the author could have written it without those details since she has done so well pulling them all together. I just don't read a lot of history.

This is one of the books I selected for the non-fiction quarter of Reading Envy Russia (#readingenvyrussia) - April was month 1 so you can still join in with 2 more months of non-fiction reading to go.

View all my reviews

Review: Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you're like me and struggle to read history, make it a cultural history like this one, where the history is told sideways through the life and work of an artist, in this case the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and his hometown of Leningrad, up until and during the Siege itself. The publisher is also YA and while this book is considered YA, I didn't find it overly simplified in its discussion of the music or the history. The author does a fantastic job narrating his own work, bringing a vibrance to the political and musical worlds of Shostakovich.

One of my goals this year was to better understand how Russia moved from WWI into the 1950s and still remain a powerhouse despite - or as I'm learning on top of - the devastation to the country and its people. The background of this story displays many of the missteps made by the Soviet government - really mostly Stalin - on the German front in particular, but also in dealing with their own citizens. One somewhat sordid argument this author uncovers is that it was Stalin's history of food deprivation that may have trained the citizens of Leningrad to survive what should have been an impossible solution. I don't want to give him that much credit, but it was an interesting tangent.

And who will now go on a Shostakovich listening spree? It's me!


View all my reviews

Reading Envy 245: Looking Back at the Russian Novel

At the end of March, a handful of us gathered to discuss what we had read for the Russian novel quarter of Reading Envy Russia. We also discuss the works we abandoned, some dips into Ukrainian literature, and talked more about what makes a novel quintessentially Russian. Thanks to all who joined in during this chat, in Goodreads, and in social media!

Download or listen via this link:
Reading Envy 245: Looking Back at the Russian Novel 

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Books discussed:

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them by Elif Batuman
The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, translated by Paul Foote
The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva, translated by Carol Apollonio
The Hall of the Singing Caryatids by Victor Pelevin, translated by Andrew Bromfield
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart
Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Marian Schwarz
The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, translated by Eugene Ostahevsky
Life Went on Anyway: Stories by Oleg Sentsov, translated by Uilleam Blacker


Other mentions:

Ted Chiang
Ken Liu
Hanya Yanagihara
"Men Who Explain Lolita to Me" by Rebecca Solnit on LitHub
"Dead Soul" by Masha Gessen in Vanity Fair
St. Michael's bells ringing in 2013

Related episodes:

Episode 237 - Reading Goals 2022
Episode 241 - Feral Pigeons with Laurie
Episode 243 - Russian Novel Speed Date 

Stalk us online:

Reading Envy Readers on Goodreads (home of Reading Envy Russia)
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. You can see the full collection for Reading Envy Russia 2022 on Bookshop.org.

Reading Envy 244: 2nd Quarter - Russian Non-Fiction

Lauren W. will be co-hosting this non-fiction quarter of Reading Envy Russia. We share books we have already read and freely recommend, and also chat about the piles and shelves of books we are considering. Let us know your recommendations and where you hope to start in the comments, or join the conversation in Goodreads.

Download or listen via this link:
Reading Envy 244: 2nd Quarter - Russian Non-Fiction

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Or listen via Stitcher
Or listen through Spotify 
Or listen through Google Podcasts

Books we can recommend:

Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi
Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi by Teffi
Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich
Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Pevear & Volokhonsky
Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich
Voices of Chernobyl (also titled Chernobyl Prayer) by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith Gessen
Other Russias by Victoria Lomasko, translated by Thomas Campbell
The Future is History by Masha Gessen
Never Remember by Masha Gessen, photography by Misha Friedman
Where the Jews Aren’t by Masha Gessen
Pushkin’s Children by Tatyana Tolstaya
The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya
Imperium by Ryszard Kapucinski, translated by Klara Glowczewska
A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia’s Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield
Putin Country by Anne Garrels
Letters: Summer 1926 by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Rainer Maria Rilke
Sovietistan by Erika Fatland
The Commissar Vanishes by David King
Gulag by Anne Applebaum
The Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum
The Magical Chorus by Solomon Volkov, translated by Antonina Bouis 
Shostaskovich and Stalin by Solomon Volkov
The Tiger by John Vaillant
Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght
How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut
Please to the Table by Anya von Bremzen
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen

Books we are considering:

All Lara’s Wars by Wojchiech Jagielski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Eric Ericson (there is a unabridged 1800+ pg, and an author approved abridged version, 400-some pages)
Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg, translated by Paul Stevenson, Max Hayward
Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov, translated by John Glad
Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
The Life Written by Himself by Avvakum Petrov
My Childhood by Maxim Gorky
Teffi: A Life of Letters and Laughter by Edythe Haber
Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam, tr. Max Hayward
The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Eugene Yelchin
Putin's Russia: life in a failing democracy by Anna Politkovskaya ; translated by Arch Tait.
A Russian diary: a journalist's final account of life, corruption, and death in Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya
Notes on Russian Literature by F.M. Dostoevsky
The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece by Kevin Birmingham
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham
Less than One: Selected Essays by Joseph Brodsky
Tolstoy Together by Yiyun Li
The Border by Erika Fatland
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
The Last Empire: Final Days of the Soviet Union by Serhii Plokhy
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy
Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii Plokhy
Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Serhii Plokhy
Man with the Poison Gun: a Cold War Spy Story by Serhii Plokhy
Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov, tr. David Floyd
Manual for Survival: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster by Kate Brown
Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown
A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland by Kate Brown
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev
Across the Ussuri Kray by Vladimir Arsenyev, translated by Slaght
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army by Vasily Grossman
The Road by Vasily Grossman
Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and Depraved of Chernobyl by Markiyan Kamysh
Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene
Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine & beyond by Olia Hercules
Red Sands by Caroline Eden
Black Sea by Caroline Eden
Tasting Georgia by Carla Capalbo
 

Other mentions:

PEN list of writers against Putin
New Yorker article about Gessen siblings
Thanksgivukkah 2013 
League of Kitchens - Uzbek lesson
League of Kitchens - Russian lesson
Masha Gessen on Ezra Klein podcast, March 2022

Related episodes:

Episode 067 - Rain and Readability with Ruth(iella)
Episode 084 - A Worthy Tangent with Bryan Alexander
Episode 138 - Shared Landscape with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 237 - Reading Goals 2022
Episode 243 - Russian Novel Speed Date 

Stalk us online:

Reading Envy Readers on Goodreads (home of Reading Envy Russia)
Lauren at Goodreads
Lauren is @end.notes on Instagram
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. You can see the full collection for Reading Envy Russia 2022 on Bookshop.org.

Books Read March 2022: 33-48

Overload check: last March I read 28 books. This March, 16. Plus 680 pages of Pandora's Star. I looked at the 450 remaining pages tonight and decided there was no chance I'd finish it before April so I might as well work on my Books of March list instead! 

Not counted: Pete the Cat books, dinosaur books, and a new favorite, Swim, Swim, Sink.

A gentle reminder that all reviews can still be seen on my Goodreads profile (the review will be with the book; the format will be specified unless it's in print.) And the books with green outlines are my 5-star reads for the month!

33. Nervous System by Lina Meruane; translated by Megan McDowell ⭐️⭐️
34. Stuck with You by Ali Hazelwood; narrated by Meg Sylvan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
35. Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
36. The Fell by Sarah Moss   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
37. Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
38. If You Ask Me by  Libby Hubscher   ⭐️⭐️⭐️
39. Heaven by Mieko Kawakami; translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
40. Free Love by Tessa Hadley   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
41. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
42. Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina; translated by Lisa Hayden ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
43. Light Years from Home by Mike Chen   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
44. Recitatif  by Toni Morrison; narrated by Bahni Turpen; introduction by Zadie Smith ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
45. Love After the End by Joshua Whitehead, ed.   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
46. Love Beyond Body, Space, & Time by Hope Nicholson, ed.   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
47. The Time of Women by Elena Chizhova; translated by Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
48. Good Talk by Mira Jacob   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Books read: 16

Audiobook: 2
Ebook: 10
Print: 4

Library: 6
TBR: 0
Purchased 2022: 1
Review copy: 7
Subscription: 1

Around the World: 4
Booker International Prize: 1
Indigenous Reading Circle: 1
Indigenous Reads otherwise: 1
Melanated Reader's 20 Books by Black Women: 1
Mid-Century Women: 1
Reading Envy Russia: 2
Sword and Laser: 0
Tournament of Books: 1
Women's Prize: 0

Reading Envy 243: Russian Novel Speed Date

It's been a while since I've done a speed dating bonus episode, and this one is all about Russian novels for the Reading Envy Russia novel quarter. I discuss books I tried, what I think of them, and books I read previously. We might be moving on to non-fiction officially, but that doesn't mean we have to leave Russian literature behind forever.

Download or listen via this link:
Reading Envy 243: Russian Novel Speed Date

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Or listen via Stitcher
Or listen through Spotify 
Or listen through Google Podcasts

Books discussed:

An Evening with Claire by Gaito Gazdanov, translated by Bryan Karetnyk
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
First Love by Ivan Turgenev, translated by Richard Freeborn
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, translated by Leo Tolstoy
Oblomov by Ivan Goncherov, translated by Stephen Pearl
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
The Time of Women by Elena Chizhova, translated by Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas
Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonina W. Bouis
Oblivion by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonina W. Bouis
Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Marian Schwartz
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Lisa C. Hayden
Anna K.: A Love Story by Jenny Lee
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Constance Garrett
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by David McDuff
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
City of Thieves by David Benioff
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
The Bookworm by Mitch Silver
A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen
Fardwor, Russia! by Oleg Kashin, translated by Will Evans

Related episodes:  

Episode 228 - Full of Secrets with Audrey
Episode 135 - Speed Dating 2018, Round 5
Episode 113 - Speed Dating 2018, round 1
Episode 117 - Speed Dating 2018, round 2
Episode 120 - Summer Reading; Speed Dating 2018, round 3   
Episode 128 - Poetry and Whale Guts (Bonus episode; Speed Dating 2018, round 4)
Episode 063 - Desolation Road (book speed dating and books on grief)
Episode 059 - Are you Inspired Yet? bonus book speed dating
Episode 047 - Sex with Elvis: Bonus Book Speed Dating Episode
Episode 035 - Speed Dating Books 

 

Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy


All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. I link to Amazon when a book is not listed with Bookshop.

Review: Zuleikha

Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This 21st century Russian novel, by a woman and about a woman, rose to the top of the novels I was considering for Reading Envy Russia - it is set in the 1930s as the Red Army is moving through rural regions of the country, removing people from land they owned and had worked while moving toward collectivism for all farming.

I had the mistaken impression that Communism was pro-peasant class but learned that landowning people, referred to as kulak, were treated as enemies. Many were killed outright, as Zuleikha's husband is, and many were sent to work camps in Siberia, as Zuleikha is. Neither of these are really spoilers although they take some time to happen. This period is referred to as the kulakization.
Other parts of interest - Zuleikha and her husband are Muslim, something I haven't seen much of in Russian literature so far. She also is in service to her mother in law, a terrible woman. The underlying premise seems to be that her life improves in Siberia. There are other memorable characters like a doctor, the commandant, a female soldier, even an artist. But the real star is Zuleikha.

View all my reviews

Books Read February 2022: 15-32

This month was chaos as I tried to finish the remaining Tournament of Books shortlist (still reading the last one when March hit) and to try out a bunch of Russian novels for whoever decided to make this year of all years the year of reading Russia! 

I missed one book club discussion (Darcie Little Badger with the Book Cougars) but finally was able to attend the Indigenous Reading Circle discussion. I've heard Tournament of Books is moving to Discord so now I need to learn one more social network - or excuse me, digital discussion platform - and I'm too old! Sword and Laser has been trying to live in both Goodreads and Discord so maybe it will give me a different perspective on that group.

A gentle reminder that all reviews can still be seen on my Goodreads profile (the review will be with the book; the format will be specified unless it's in print.) And the books with green outlines are my 5-star reads for the month!

15. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, narrated by Louise Erdrich ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
16. The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson, narrated by Nikole Hannah-Jones ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
17. Seek You: A Journey through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
18. Putin's Russia by Darryl Cunningham ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
19. In Concrete by Anne Garrétta, translated by Emma Ramadan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
20. A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger ⭐️⭐️⭐️
21. Islands of Decolonial Love by Leslie Betasamosake Simpson, narrated by Tantoo Cardinal ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
22. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
23. The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
24. Joan is Okay by Weike Wang, narrated by Catherine Ho ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
25. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
26. Broken Halves of a Milky Sun: Poems by Aaiún Nin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
27. The Interior Silence by Sarah Sands ⭐️⭐️⭐️
28. Must Love Books by Shauna Robinson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
29. Quiet Girl in a Noisy World by Debbie Tung ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
30. The Trees by Percival Everett ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
31. First Love by Ivan Turgenev, translated by Constance Garnett ⭐️⭐️⭐️
32. It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo, translated by Elizabeth Bryer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Books read: 18

Audiobook: 4
Ebook: 11
Print: 3

Library: 5
TBR: 1
Purchased 2022: 3
Review copy: 8
Subscription: 1

Around the World: 6
Indigenous Reading Circle: 1
Melanated Reader's 20 Books by Black Women: 3

Reading Envy Russia: 2
Sword and Laser: 0
Tournament of Books: 1

Review: Putin's Russia: The Rise of a Dictator

Putin's Russia: The Rise of a Dictator by Darryl Cunningham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This comes out February 15th and I had a digital copy from Drawn and Quarterly via Netgalley - to read the story of Putin is to better understand the story of Russia, unfortunately. He was born in Leningrad/St Petersburg only eight years after the siege and clawed his way to positions of power and money. He's like the Dick Cheney of Russia, where for every shady situation, you pull back the curtain and there he is.

This is content that probably exists in biographies and other critiques of Putin and his policies, but for me, easier to consume in graphic form. It's really astounding how Putin can have such a high popularity rating when we know about the people he's had killed (goodbye, free press, goodbye, vocal opponents), the countries he's invaded or destroyed, but since we have a person who copies his playbook, it also feels familiar.

In my year of reading Russia I worry I lack the knowledge to understand the subtext of the literature I'm reading, and from that perspective this graphic non fiction book helps provide context about Russia's power and control from the fall of the Soviet Union to the present day. Putin has been there all along....

View all my reviews

Books Read January 2022: 1-14

This might be the least number of books I've read in a month. I had one week with family in Myrtle Beach, the first time traveling with kids and also cooking meals so I found I had even less time to read. We returned home to one child in covid quarantine and another in virtual school for the week for covid/weather issues at the school. I was also dipping into some Russian novels that won't be reflected yet, but do take some time.

The Ozeki was the one book I had started in 2021, and my top five-star read was the Shafak.

A gentle reminder that all reviews can still be seen on my Goodreads profile (the review will be with the book; the format will be specified unless it's in print.) And the books with green outlines are my 5-star reads for the month!

1. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
2. Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
3. The Possessed by Elif Batuman ⭐️⭐️⭐️
4. You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
5. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
6. The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, translated by Lucy North ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
7. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
8. An Evening with Claire by Gaito Gazdanov, translated by Bryan Karetnyk ⭐️⭐️⭐️
9. Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood by DaMaris B. Hill ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
10. Under One Roof by Ali Hazelwood, narrated by Emma Link ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
11. Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
12. Sticker by  Henry Hoke ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
13. Colored: The Unsung Life of Claudette Colvin by Emilie Plateau, illustrated by Emilie Plateau ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
14. Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

 Books read: 14

Audiobook: 1
Ebook: 9
Print: 4

Library: 6
TBR: 1
Purchased 2022: 0
Review copy: 7

Around the World: 5
Melanated Reader's 20 Books by Black Women: 2
Reading Envy Russia: 3
Sword and Laser: 1
Tournament of Books: 2