Book meme

[cactuswatcher]

From TCH
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451; which book do you want to be?

Hero of Our Times by Lermontov. It's short and my brain would be less likely to do violence to it over time.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

In high school: Princess Marya Bolkonskaya, the long suffering sister of Prince Andrei in War and Peace. Now: my two genius heroines of my own writing, AJM and VSMP.

The last book you bought was:

I'm not reading fiction much any more so: Lone Star Nation by H W Brands, which is about the Anglo settlement of the Mexican territory of Texas and its eventual independence, followed by annexation by the US. The author has an interesting point of view. But it's not encouraging when you find a glaring factual error in the first few pages. Historians are supposed to know more about the subject than the rest of us, not less, right?

The last book you read:

The Myth of The Great War, by John Mosier, which is about how Allied military propaganda affected the course of the First World War, resulting in the wasting of hundreds of thousands of lives, and the near collapse of western Europe.

What are you currently reading?

At the moment nothing!

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
1. War and Peace in Russian.
2. The Good Soldier Schwejk, by Jaroslav Hasek
3. Burnham's Celestial Handbook , for stargazing.
4. A large blank notebook to write in.
5. A good how-to book on how to escape a desert island.

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting question. I'd have to say that among Russian novelists of the 19th century Tolstoy probably translates the best into other languages. His style is clean and clear cut, and his philosophy straight forward and uncomplicated. Except for the lyrical passages as (in War and Peace) Natasha Rostova's impressions of her first ball, her dance in the peasant hut and her singing with her cousin with their bedroom in the evening, it's easy to forget what language you are reading in. But on the other hand there is something very special and poetic about his Russian. The very fact that it translates well doesn't negate that.