XMAS BOOKS.

Finally got my computer back, but I’m still recovering from the holiday, so I’ll just list the books I found under the Xmas tree (a balsam this year—we decided fragrance was important to us):
Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow, by Anders Nilsen (thanks, Eric!)
The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated, by Nabokov (thanks, Brooke!)
And two from those commenters sans peur et sans reproche, AJP and jamessal (you guys are nuts, but I’m not about to sic the nice men with the butterfly nets on you):
Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia, by Vladislav Zubok
Diary, 1901-1969, by Kornei Chukovsky
I’m almost done with the Zubok, one of the best books I’ve ever read on Russian cultural history, and will be reporting on it shortly; there will doubtless be more to say on the others as I get to them. Books always put me in that ho-ho-ho spirit!

Comments

  1. “Wolf Hall”: just as good as they all said it was.

  2. Yeah, I really want to read that. Thanks for the report!

  3. absolutely salivating with envy about the two last entries – Zubok’s and Chukovsky’s diaries. I’ve read Sheila Fitzpatrick’s review of Zubok’s book and Chukovsky is the key figure in Russia’s 20th century anglophilia.
    But I’m happy with my own new Christmas discovery – Susan Richards’ ‘Epics of Everyday Life. Encounters in a changing Russia’, an amazing book.

  4. I’ve got it, and it is indeed amazing! When I got it I was hungry for information about Venedikt Yerofeev, whom I had just discovered, and it had wonderful descriptions of him and his situation. (I do wish it had an index so you could find things more easily.) Now I want to reread it…

  5. Zubok’s book is really great and uniquely illuminating. I’m looking forward with great interest to your report on it.

  6. Believe me, Jamessal & I get our money’s worth during a year of languagehat. We wish we could pay all our bills with books of our own choosing. Who would get Strunk & White, I wonder?

  7. Hear, hear!

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