Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

April 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Translated from the Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas. Peirene Press, 2018. Originally published 1997. 192 pgs. Purchased. In 1991, a jar filled with scraps of paper was discovered buried in Kaunas, the former capital of Lithuania. The papers document nearly three years in Dalia Grinkevičiūtė after she deported to a Soviet gulag in Siberia in 1941 at the age of fourteen with her mother and older brother. Grinkevičiūtė had buried the papers in 1950, fearing they would be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Indigenious Peoples, Nonfiction, Peirene Press, Russia, Translated • Tags: Dalia Grinkevičiūtė

Children of The Cave by Virve Sammalkorpi

March 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah. Peirene Press, 2019. Originally published 2016. 176 pgs. Purchased. In 1819, Iax Agolasky travels to northwest Russia as the research assistant to a well-known French anthropologist and explorer named Jean Moltique. The goal of Moltique’s exhibition is to locate lost or ancient tribes in the region, and their search leads them to a cave in the Russian wilderness where a small group of children live. Moltique believes […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction, Finnish, Peirene Press, Russia, Translated • Tags: Virve Sammalkorpi

Fascism by Madeleine K. Albright

March 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Harper Perennial, 2019. Originally published 2018. 320 pgs. Library copy. In the conclusion of her book, Albright says that some may find the title of her book to be alarmist, but it is her belief that we are living in an alarming time. Her assertion holds gravitas because of her credentials – she served as the United States Secretary of State and the Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 2001 – and her personal […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Balkans, Europe, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Nonfiction, North America, Poland, Russia, South America, United States • Tags: Madeleine K. Albright

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Part Two)

March 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Recorded Books, 2000. Originally published 1866. 25 hours, 1 minute. Library copy. This post includes my thoughts on Part Four through the Epilogue of Dostoyevsky’s most famous work. For my thoughts on Parts One through Three, please see this post. As the end of Part Three, the main character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov had awoken to find an unknown yet aristocratically dressed man standing over […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Guidall

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Part One)

February 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Recorded Books, 2000. Originally published 1866. 25 hours, 1 minute. Library copy. Arguably Dostoyevsky’s most famous work, Crime and Punishment is divided into six parts plus epilogue. Given the novel’s length and (assumed) difficulty in reading, my book club decided to split the book at the halfway mark and discuss it at two meetings. Our February meetup covered Part One to Three, which […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Guidall

Putin’s Kleptocracy by Karen Dawisha

January 20, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Simon & Schuster, 2014. 465 pgs. Purchased. These days, Russian president Vladimir Putin figures prominently in the American news cycle. There is quite a bit of speculation as to what role he may or may not have played in the 2016 presidential election and how much leverage he may or may not have over the current American president, Donald Trump. In following every breaking news article and columnist’s speculation, I have come to realize that my […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Nonfiction, Russia • Tags: Karen Dawisha

The Romanovs by Robert K. Massie

August 7, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Random House, 2012. Originally published 1995. 320 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “The Final Chapter”, Massie’s book covers the aftermath of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, the heir to the Imperial Russia throne, the four Grand Duchesses (including Anastasia), and four servants on July 17, 1918. This “aftermath” includes: covering the discovery of most of the family’s remains in 1979 and the realization that Alexei and Anastasia or Maria were missing the fights between […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Nonfiction, Russia • Tags: Robert K. Massie

Hostage by Guy Delisle

August 2, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the French. Drawn and Quarterly, 2017. 436 pgs. Library copy. In 1997, a French administrator for Médecins Sans Frontières (or, Doctors Without Borders) named Christophe Andre was kidnapped in the middle of the night from the organization’s base in Nazran and taken to Chechnya in Russia. Andre is held hostage for three months and tormented by the thoughts of escaping and fantasies of rescue. Delisle is best known for his graphic travelogues of places normally […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Comics, Crime, Europe, French, Nonfiction, Russia, Translated • Tags: Guy Delisle

City of Thieves by David Benioff

July 26, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Penguin Books, 2009. 319 pgs. Purchased. When a Nazi pilot parachutes onto a street in Leningrad, Russia near Lev Beniov’s home, he and his friends climb down from the roof and hurry over to attack the pilot. When the threesome discover the pilot is already dead, they steal liquor and small amounts of food off the body. Looting is strictly forbidden by the Soviet regime, though, and Lev is picked up by the police and thrown into […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Russia • Tags: David Benioff

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

March 21, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. W.W. Norton, 2010. 334 pgs. Library copy.   Subtitled “The Curious Science of Life in the Void”, Roach’s book questions the efficacy of a plan by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to send a manned craft to Mars by 2030. At the time of the book’s publication in 2010, (wo)man has landed on the Moon and spent months orbiting over Earth in the International Space Station. Yet questions remain about the effect of zero gravity on the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Book Club, Europe, Japan, Nonfiction, North America, Russia, United States • Tags: Mary Roach

Ten Favorite Reads From 2017

January 5, 2018 by Christina

I took an unplanned (yet needed) extended break from book blogging in 2017, but I thought I’d dust away the cobwebs and share ten of my favorite reads from the past year. I read 69 books in 2017 — a smaller number than is typical for me, but to be expected given how the year went for me. My list of ten includes three nonfiction titles and all but one was published after 2009. Half were actually selected by my […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Africa, Asia, Bookish Notes, Europe, North America, Oceania, Russia, Scandinavia, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam • Tags: Amor Towles, Barbara Demick, Bill Browder, Fredrik Backman, Gail Honeyman, Jane Harper, Laurent Binet, Tim O'Brien, Trevor Noah, Yaa Gyasi

Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

May 22, 2015 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harper Perennial, 2010. 496 pgs. Purchased. Nina Revskaya, an eighty-year-old former acclaimed ballerina from the Bolshoi Ballet in the Soviet Union, has decided to sell her jewelry collection – unique for both its contents and its origins in Soviet Russia – in an auction to benefit the Boston Ballet Foundation. Since her retirement from the Boston Ballet, Nina has largely become a recluse in her Back Bay brownstone interacting with only two chosen friends infrequently and with […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, New England, North America, Russia, United States • Tags: Daphne Kalotay