Explorations
Nov. 29th, 2018 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI've been trying out some different stuff on my Kindle. I'm normally reading four books there at a time, cycling among them and replacing them as I finish - usually two fiction (broadly construed) and two non-fiction. The latest two fiction works I read there were Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" and a collection of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, "A Few Figs from Thistles"; neither belongs to my usual fare.
"Boris Godunov" was interesting; Pushkin presents matters from the viewpoints of Boris, pseudo-Dmitri, and several lesser figures such as Kurbski and Shiuski. The main thing I came away with was that I don't know enough Russian history. I know bits and snatches from different periods: Kievan Rus, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, what there is to be extracted from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and some twentieth-century stuff, but no coherent overall picture. I shall have to rectify that. (Anyone have any suggestions?)
The Millay was nice, overall; a couple of poems had echoes of Yeats for me, and several presented non-traditional love poetry. (Why am I in love with you? I know many better and kinder men!) I think my favorite was "How shall I know, unless I go". One thing, though: the collection was short - more than half the download was Project Gutenberg boilerplate!
(My current Kindle fiction works are Voltaire's "Candide" and Durrell's "Justine".)
"Boris Godunov" was interesting; Pushkin presents matters from the viewpoints of Boris, pseudo-Dmitri, and several lesser figures such as Kurbski and Shiuski. The main thing I came away with was that I don't know enough Russian history. I know bits and snatches from different periods: Kievan Rus, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, what there is to be extracted from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and some twentieth-century stuff, but no coherent overall picture. I shall have to rectify that. (Anyone have any suggestions?)
The Millay was nice, overall; a couple of poems had echoes of Yeats for me, and several presented non-traditional love poetry. (Why am I in love with you? I know many better and kinder men!) I think my favorite was "How shall I know, unless I go". One thing, though: the collection was short - more than half the download was Project Gutenberg boilerplate!
(My current Kindle fiction works are Voltaire's "Candide" and Durrell's "Justine".)
