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.

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

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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

Review: Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've had this book on my TBR forever and finally got it from the library. I didn't really even know what it was about and went in cold. Mira Jacob writes about what it is like to be brown (for her, Indian with darker skin than her other family members) in the America post 9/11 up through Trump's election win. Not only that but married to a Jewish (white) man whose parents refuse to see the harm in voting for Trump, and mother of a young mixed race boy with Questions.

What I love is her very frank tone. In all the "talks" in the book she shows how she navigates difficult situations where people want her to make them feel better about racism, often their own, and what happens when she doesn't. This includes one very difficult conversation with her husband! The art is hand-drawn people often cut out (or the appearance of being cut out) and laid over stock photos, which adds a dimension of reality to what is happening (although to Mira it's only too real.)

I'd love to see her take on our current situation, and I hope she continues writing in this form.

View all my reviews

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
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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: Recitatif: A Story

Recitatif: A Story by Toni Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I listened to the audio edition of the only short story Toni Morrison ever wrote, narrated by Bahni Turpen. If you get the audio, which is under two hours, the story doesn't start until 59:21, because the entire first half is an essay on the story by Zadie Smith. I'm of the personal opinion that one should read the work before reading commentary on said work, and continue to skip intros, prefaces, and more.

The story is "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial" - so either the reader knows this going in and goes looking for clues, or doesn't know this and makes a lot of assumptions and then is forced to confront themselves with their biases.

Twyla and Roberta meet as 8 year olds at a school for orphans, and then several more times as they move through time.

View all my reviews

Review: Light Years From Home

Light Years From Home by Mike Chen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The Shao family had become a textbook case study in trauma. But with aliens."

I first heard of Mike Chen on the Reading Glasses podcast, as he's a friend of their show. This book is a different sort of read because it really is more about this one family than it is a more traditional science fiction novel, and even the idea of whether it is a science fiction novel depends on which character you find most trustworthy.

It's been 15 years since Jakob disappeared on a family hike at a lake, and 14 years since the father died trying to look for him. Kass, the self proclaimed responsible one, is caring for her mother who has dementia, while Evie has become the host of a show about alien abductions. Evie and Jakob are twins and she's convinced he was abducted. Kass is pretty sure he is dead or being irresponsible, probably on drugs in some foreign country. Then Jakob returns, dot dot dot.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley. The book came out January 25, 2022.

View all my reviews

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