My son helped me with a burn pile today, good hard work in the heat and the sun. While chilling in the shade while it smoldered, I read the closing pages of the epic Stalingrad, which sets the stage for the battle's turning point as depicted in the sequel. So many characters and pathos! It truly is a great novel.

Since I've read Life and Fate twice, it's off to other pastures now... another book on Russia. The world would be so much better without Putins and other such... it's a shame, to put it mildly.

#stalingrad #reading #russianlit #literature

I made the decision last week to read The Brothers Karamazov. It’s my first time, and yes, it is daunting. But so far I’ve found it extremely engaging and finished 7 chapters (they’re not long). I’m trying my best not to read too fast, adding notes/marginalia and keeping a journal for reflection.

I’m interested in finding any lectures or discussions that go through it from beginning to end. Please recommend if you know of any.

📚 #reading #readingcommunity #RussianLit #bookcommunity #books

I think I may start reading #Dostoevsky (and #Chekhov and #Gogol, et al) again, because I suspect I will really vibe with the themes of social alienation in a crushingly indifferent world.

#RussianLit is the most thematically appropriate stuff I can think of for this apocalypse.

"He loved science and deeply respected it, but, like many of us, he soon came to the conclusion that to follow the career of a scientific man meant to join the camp of the Philistines, and that there was plenty of other and more urgent work that he could do."
- Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899)

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-memoirs-of-a-revolutionist

#academia #praxis #theory #kropotkin #anarchism #19thCLit #RussianLit #memoirs #biography #bibliophile #science #school #socialism #LibertarianSocialism

Scenes from a previous life

#RussianLit #Limerick #FromTheArchives

https://www.tumblr.com/juliaferraioli/712340091237974016/kind-of-a-mood

Here are some things about me that are important but aren’t in my profile, so folks can decide to follow (or abandon!):

#literature #modernism #suprematism #bolano #mann #radiohead #classicalmusic #jazz #baseball #nyknicks #opera #calvino #russianlit #zappa #activism #diy #culture #raymondwilliams #charliebrown #leguin #butler #calvino #thetempest

I saw this posted by someone else who noted it was a good way to help us find new people and I agree. We could all do it!