It’s February, and I already feel a bit less like I’m hibernating. After reading The Tales of Belkin I immediately felt the urge to go on with more Russian literature, an area I’m light on for no good reason. Seems like a good mini-theme for part of February, no? I’ve also finished up The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, which I think I’ll write a bit more about, and A Hero of Our Time and Poor Folk are on my little side table o’ books. I’m thinking about going for some Tolstoy as well; I have an edition of The Kreutzer Sonata and other stories as well as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (and other stories). I’d like to read War and Peace this year but not now, not yet.
I’ve had to take a bit of a break though for Woolf in Winter. Orlando is coming up for discussion this coming Friday. I just sat down with the first fifty pages and am loving it. I was getting a bit nervous earlier in the week as Anthony at Times Flow Stemmed reported a need to discontinue his Orlando read after the more-intense Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, but thus far at least I am charmed. I have some thoughts about that, but I’ll wait until Friday when I’ve actually read the book to say more.
My other break from the Russians was Bed by Tao Lin. After my unexpected enjoyment of Shoplifting from American Apparel, and further encouraged by his contributions to We Are the Friction, I decided to pick up a this book of short stories. They were a bit uneven, and it definitely seems that his newer work is better—not so much more mature as more itself—but were very good in places.
And some links I didn’t post yesterday:
- Week 2 of the 2666 group read leads to a post on a lovely Borges poem. (Las obras de Roberto Bolaño)
- verbivore introduces us to some new small presses. (Incurable Logophilia)
- “When I eat English muffins, I butter both halves and spread jam on one and eat the one with jam and butter first and the one with just butter second. I know that’s probably not how you eat them, but for me the second half acts as a sort of palate cleanser. So sit your ass down.” I eat them exactly the same way. (McSweeney’s)
- “Stefan Zweig just tastes fake. He’s the Pepsi of Austrian writing.” (London Review of Books)
Nicole – My reading of the last chapter of ‘Orlando’ was enjoyable. I suspect that if I reread in 12 months I may feel differently. I have just been so knocked sideways by ‘To the Lighthouse’, I am not ready for ‘Woolf-lite.’
Of Russian literature, I am an enthusiast of the short stories of Turgenev. The collection in ‘Sketches from a Hunter’s Album’ are breathtaking.