Comments on: Thoughts prompted by a Russian classic http://prairieprogressive.com/2008/01/05/thoughts-prompted-by-a-russian-classic/ thoughts while vastly outnumbered on the northern great plains Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:01:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: CA Heidelberger http://prairieprogressive.com/2008/01/05/thoughts-prompted-by-a-russian-classic/#comment-4984 CA Heidelberger Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:42:46 +0000 http://prairieprogressive.com/2008/01/05/thoughts-prompted-by-a-russian-classic/#comment-4984 Russian Reading Challenge -- great gift for yourself! Don't know if you've finalized your list yet, but let me join a commenter on your earlier post in recommending "We" by Evgeny Zamyatin, a remarkable prefiguring of Brave New World and 1984, and especially interesting being written by an eager Russian futurist after the Bolshevik revolution. If you don't like aristocrats, War and Peace may bug you, but as you said, how do you get away from aristocrats in classic literature? Still, War and Peace is worth the effort -- it's an utterly unusual book, trying to be both narrative and philosophy, rather like The Grapes of Wrath (at least that's what I tell my lit students!). Ah, but then Crime and Punishment should be right up your alley. Great regular folks, heck of a story. (Maybe I'll reread it this summer!) Keep us posted -- your challenge should make for interesting blogposts! Russian Reading Challenge — great gift for yourself! Don’t know if you’ve finalized your list yet, but let me join a commenter on your earlier post in recommending “We” by Evgeny Zamyatin, a remarkable prefiguring of Brave New World and 1984, and especially interesting being written by an eager Russian futurist after the Bolshevik revolution.

If you don’t like aristocrats, War and Peace may bug you, but as you said, how do you get away from aristocrats in classic literature? Still, War and Peace is worth the effort — it’s an utterly unusual book, trying to be both narrative and philosophy, rather like The Grapes of Wrath (at least that’s what I tell my lit students!).

Ah, but then Crime and Punishment should be right up your alley. Great regular folks, heck of a story. (Maybe I’ll reread it this summer!) Keep us posted — your challenge should make for interesting blogposts!

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