Archives for July 2010

BIRTHDAY LOOT 2010.

July 1, 2010 by 44 Comments

As I enter my sixtieth year, I take pleasure in all the people life has put in my path (which of course includes you LH readers); on a less elevated plane, I take pleasure in the chicken curry and homemade peach ice cream I’m now digesting and in the presents generous kith and kin have showered me with, the more LH-relevant of which I will now mention, so you will know what I am experiencing in the weeks to come. From my wonderful wife, a CD of The Indestructible Beat of Soweto (this is one of the best records ever, and if you’re not familiar with it you should run right out and listen to it—mbaqanga forever!) and Viktor Shklovsky’s Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot. Ever since I read Shklovsky’s Sentimental Journey I’ve been wanting to read more by this amazing stylist and critic, and this late work (it was finished in 1981, when he was 88) looks like just the ticket.
From Sven & Leslie, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation by Alexei Yurchak; from Brooke & Elias, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman (see this post from February) and The Russian Context: The Culture Behind the Language by Eloise M. Boyle and Genevra Gerhart (you can read about this amazing book, which I will be working my way through for at least the next year, here; I learned about it from a comment by Bill Walderman to this post on The Russian’s World by Gerhart). And from my brother Eric, this selection of Asian movies (original titles courtesy of Wikipedia/IMDb): Syndromes and a Century (แสงศตวรรษ, saeng satawăːt), Adrift in Tokyo (転々, Tenten), Public Enemy (공공의 적, Gonggongui jeog), 24 City (二十四城记/二十四城記, Er shi si cheng ji), and Ashes of Time Redux (东邪西毒, Dung che sai duk). Many thanks to one and all!
Update. Just received a package from bulbul in far-off Slovakia: a copy of Язык старой Москвы [The language of old Moscow], a “linguistic-encyclopedic dictionary” of the language of Moscow of the late 19th and early 20th centuries by V. S. Elistratov. Looks both enjoyable and useful—Ďakujem!

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