Please link your reviews for your Russian Classic here. This is only for the Russian Classic category. If you do not have a blog, or somewhere public on the internet where you post book reviews, please write your mini-review/thoughts in the comments section. If you like, you can include the name of your blog and/or the title of the book in your link, like this: "Karen K. @ Books and Chocolate (Crime and Punishment)."
Done with my first book for the challenge! The hardest one - Russian Classic!
ReplyDeleteAnna Karenina - that is challenging! Russian and pre-1800s Classics are going to be my hardest too, so I've finished my Russian book also. Thanks for linking your post!
DeleteI just added the link for And Quiet Flows the Don. Enjoyed it much more than Doctor Zhivago.
ReplyDeleteJust added my review of Crime and Punishment. Liked it a lot.
ReplyDeletePlease don't hate me, I had to post Victor Serge from another challenge because I had to see something I've never seen before - Victor Serge listed twice in a row in a challenge.
ReplyDeleteI added Brothers Karamazov. I loved it.
ReplyDeleteJust finished "Taras Bulba" by Gogol - felt like a cross between a more literary "Conan the Barbarian" and "The Iliad"
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a good cross, ha ha ha.
DeleteJust finished Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. Picked it for two main reasons. 1) Having never read Russian literature before, I decided to cut my teeth on something short - 215 pages short to be exact. 2) Vague title symmetry with my Book by a Female Author (Wives and Daughters). In the end, I wasn't a huge fan of the book.
ReplyDeleteMy Russian classic was 'The Brothers Karamazov'. I'd expected to find it hard going, but was amazed by how much I loved it.
ReplyDeleteI read great and interesting reviews on Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych and would really like to read it for this challenge. However, I see it is classified as a "short novel" (depending on the edition, somewhere around 100 pages). Would this book qualify?
ReplyDeleteSure, that's fine. I've read Ivan Ilyich and it is excellent, I hope you enjoy it!
DeleteThank you, Karen.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich. For such a short novel, it was amazing how quickly I became engrossed in Ivan Ilyich's life and death struggle. Tolstoy was such a master. Anna Karenina is a great novel, but this one deserves as much of an audience. It was so well written!
ReplyDeleteI had put off facing the challenge of a Russian classic but now I've read Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" I am glad I finally got round to it. Do I love the protagonist? Emphatically not, but it's extremely well written and engrossing.
ReplyDeleteThis was the category I was hesitant about, so I am extra glad that I can cross it off the list now with my completion of Anna Karenina.
ReplyDeleteIt's a miracle, but I read and actually enjoyed War and Peace!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations! That's pretty awesome!
Deleteignore 34, wrong link
ReplyDeleteJust finished Eugene Onegin, and I LOVED it!!!!!! Who knew I needed Russian literature in my life?!?
ReplyDeleteI read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I read another by him - Notes from Underground - for another category in this challenge and definitely preferred Crime and Punishment. However, these were my first Russian literature reads and I'm not sure I'm motivated to read more any time soon. I just can't take the bleakness right now!
ReplyDeleteI read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I was torn between that one and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Maybe that can be for next year. :)
ReplyDeleteI listened to performances of two of Anton Cheknov's plays using Hoopla. They were performed by the L.A. Theater Works Company and were both quite good. Uncle Vanya's voice would be quite recognizable to those of us who are older. There is also a well known actor in The Three Sisters. The first also included an interview with an expert on Russian literature. I had not known that Anton Chekhov was a physician who continued to see patients after he began writing.
ReplyDeleteI read Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev. It was entertaining as a political satire and commentary on Russia, as a romance kind of annoying (but I think the author intended it that way). I'd definitely recommend getting the NYRB version and reading the introduction, which does a fantastic job of putting the book in context with what was happening in Russia at the time and Turgenev's relationship with some of the liberal and progressive circles in Russia.
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