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kingarooski's review against another edition
3.0
I really liked the idea of this book in which the author follows in the footsteps of great Russian authors and while this did happen, Sara Wheeler’s own battles with the Russian language and attempts at cooking the food distract from this. She does go into great descriptions of the authors, their lives and impact they had and she visits places where they lived or travelled. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book. The other experiences were amusing and interesting but didn’t add to the book for me.
lilreaderbug's review against another edition
1.0
Disappointing. I was expecting some travelogue, that's fine, but I went to this book to learn about Russian authors and it read more like a political diatribe.
mhersonhord's review against another edition
funny
informative
medium-paced
2.5
Assessed objectively, this book isn't good. The author has debilitating Cold War brain and her constant self-insert into the subject had me skimming past. But this book is nonetheless filled with hilarious anecdotes and details about these Russian greats, and thus was very valuable as a contribution to my Russian literature book club.
schnauzermum's review against another edition
3.0
A curious book. Basic outlines of the life and works of great 19th-century writers, along with travelogues, reports of progress in learning the Russian language, and cookery. It fails to come together, although there are interesting snippets along the way and I’ve added some more Russian novels to my TBR. I’d recommend [b:Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia|97401|Natasha's Dance A Cultural History of Russia|Orlando Figes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388803938l/97401._SY75_.jpg|937790] and [b:The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them|13268446|The Possessed Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them|Elif Batuman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328856651l/13268446._SY75_.jpg|6961467] instead.
siriface's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
3.0
drewbertmcgee's review against another edition
3.0
Part travel journal, part personal diary, part historical and political realignment of Russia's literary history, I think 2 of the 4 main parts (travel journal, diary, political book, literary critique) work. While interesting and giving insight into this specific author's mind, the rest feel much more self-indulgent rather than informative or recontextualizing the other portions. I enjoyed the segments about the intersection of the historical and literary context of Russia with the current political landscape, but it felt that each segment eventually ended up with the same thesis of "Russia is big, Putin thinks he controls it all but through tsars, communism, and Putin, the larger Russian landscape has remained bleak and terrible."
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
1.0
I have not yet read this but I'd like to point out that the title says MTS(?) AI(?) STAGS by SAGA SHNEELEG. The (?) is because a reversed ь can't actually be pronounced.
Update: I have now read it.
Update: I have now read it.
nataliya_x's review against another edition
3.0
I’m not quite sure what to make out of this book. It’s a book equivalent of a turducken — random anecdotes and trivia about Russian Golden Age writers stuffed into a travelogue which in turn is stuffed into a sort of a diary confessional.
Or to throw in some quasi-Russian flavor, maybe it’s a matryoshka doll of a book.
The selling point for me was the idea of seeing Russia through the places tied to Russian Golden Age writers. I’m pretty well-versed in Russian literature and these writers biographies, so I figured it will be a fun experience to see the places they came from.
But what I got an odd mixture of trivia and anecdotes that seemed strangely and off-puttingly fixated on negative sensationalism. I understand that scandals sell — but the focus was primarily on the unpleasant and sordid, minus Turgenev and Chekhov who are clearly her favorites (and mine as well) and generally nice people. For everyone else it was a snarky litany of the juicy unpleasantness — physical unattractiveness, affairs and STDs, monetary troubles, rivalries, marital issues and odd and unpleasant beliefs and appalling convictions, with little to offset the feel of the office water-cooler gossip.
And it’s written in a very “journalistic” style, reading like a collection of essays that would be well-suited for a glossy magazine column.
—————
Let me summarize the points breezily touched upon when it comes to the writers:
-Pushkin probably had every STD there is, wrote only when recovering from an STD, and was ugly.
- Lermontov was also ugly and died stupidly.
- Dostoyevsky was an appalling human being, an anti-Semite, a gambler and was obsessed with Russophilia and Russian spiritual superiority.
- Gogol went batshit crazy by the end of his life.
- Turgenev and Chekhov were lovely people and their chapter are the only ones without such negative filter. They both seemed too good for this world.
- Leskov and Fet and Herzen and Goncharov were also mentioned but I’m not sure why as nothing very interesting was said — it’s like they mentioned for the sake of completeness.
- Tolstoy was a messed-up miserable hypocrite hung-up on sex, sleeping with serfs and probably competing for the number of STDs with Pushkin.
—————
With the idea of visiting places where these writers lived or spent time in, Wheeler took a tour of provincial Russia, ostensibly to see modern Russia through the prism of 19th century literature and ideas — and that’s where I was starting to get a bit annoyed. Wheeler’s impressions of modern Russia are witty and pithy and mostly merciless — but the ties to the 19th century writers were often beyond tenuous, so I struggled to see much connection between what was on the page other than geographic one. Really, there’s not much that the writers of a century or two ago can tell us about modern Russia, besides propping this book’s premise. For instance, the root to perceived passive inertia of the people in Chukotka is not Oblomov-style ennui but the sociopolitical conditions and conditions. Seriously. Not to mention that she also generalizes very easily. Although early on she dismisses the ridiculous stereotypic notions of Russian soul and homogenous Russian culture, she happily proceeds to generalize whenever it suits her point — like that baffling point about Russians needing suffering to actually be happy.
Wheeler is pretty merciless, although, to give credit where credit is due, she is also quite funny and engaging. But her humor borders on mean-spirited in her constant pointing out of strange peculiarities of her hosts, tutors and travel companions in a way that often comes off as mocking and condescension. I felt uncomfortable reading this and imagining some of the people described reading their descriptions and feeling mortified.
Wheeler doesn't hold back on the criticism of Putin Russia politics either, and those are the parts that are done actually well and pithy snark is engaging indeed. But the connections between the parts, the jumping around between styles and centuries and themes on one page, relying on geography to connect it all — all that seemed a bit disjointed, maybe because in the end, the main character of this book is not Russia and not the writers but Sara Wheeler herself as the writers promised in the title really are little but set dressing to her travelogue. And I don’t think I was prepared for her to take center stage over the subjects that attracted me to this book, and I found that I just don’t care all that much for her personal accounts and gripes about bad train food or spotty wi-fi or comments on her host’s bosomless appearance.
—————
A few little gripes that I just need to get off my chest:
—————
In the end, Sara Wheeler is a funny and engaging writer, but to me this book lacked cohesiveness and depth, and was superficially interesting but without much of an impact. Had it been just a travelogue, I would probably been able to cut it more slack, but her choice of inclusion of literary “greats” in a breezy and superficially sensational manner made it feel slight and disjointed. Maybe if I knew less of the topics described I would have been charmed by the breezy snark — but as it stands, I wasn’t too impressed. It’s not bad - but not that good either.
2.5 - 3 stars.
——————
Recommended by: Left Coast Justin
Or to throw in some quasi-Russian flavor, maybe it’s a matryoshka doll of a book.
The selling point for me was the idea of seeing Russia through the places tied to Russian Golden Age writers. I’m pretty well-versed in Russian literature and these writers biographies, so I figured it will be a fun experience to see the places they came from.
But what I got an odd mixture of trivia and anecdotes that seemed strangely and off-puttingly fixated on negative sensationalism. I understand that scandals sell — but the focus was primarily on the unpleasant and sordid, minus Turgenev and Chekhov who are clearly her favorites (and mine as well) and generally nice people. For everyone else it was a snarky litany of the juicy unpleasantness — physical unattractiveness, affairs and STDs, monetary troubles, rivalries, marital issues and odd and unpleasant beliefs and appalling convictions, with little to offset the feel of the office water-cooler gossip.
And it’s written in a very “journalistic” style, reading like a collection of essays that would be well-suited for a glossy magazine column.
—————
Let me summarize the points breezily touched upon when it comes to the writers:
-Pushkin probably had every STD there is, wrote only when recovering from an STD, and was ugly.
- Lermontov was also ugly and died stupidly.
- Dostoyevsky was an appalling human being, an anti-Semite, a gambler and was obsessed with Russophilia and Russian spiritual superiority.
- Gogol went batshit crazy by the end of his life.
- Turgenev and Chekhov were lovely people and their chapter are the only ones without such negative filter. They both seemed too good for this world.
- Leskov and Fet and Herzen and Goncharov were also mentioned but I’m not sure why as nothing very interesting was said — it’s like they mentioned for the sake of completeness.
- Tolstoy was a messed-up miserable hypocrite hung-up on sex, sleeping with serfs and probably competing for the number of STDs with Pushkin.
—————
With the idea of visiting places where these writers lived or spent time in, Wheeler took a tour of provincial Russia, ostensibly to see modern Russia through the prism of 19th century literature and ideas — and that’s where I was starting to get a bit annoyed. Wheeler’s impressions of modern Russia are witty and pithy and mostly merciless — but the ties to the 19th century writers were often beyond tenuous, so I struggled to see much connection between what was on the page other than geographic one. Really, there’s not much that the writers of a century or two ago can tell us about modern Russia, besides propping this book’s premise. For instance, the root to perceived passive inertia of the people in Chukotka is not Oblomov-style ennui but the sociopolitical conditions and conditions. Seriously. Not to mention that she also generalizes very easily. Although early on she dismisses the ridiculous stereotypic notions of Russian soul and homogenous Russian culture, she happily proceeds to generalize whenever it suits her point — like that baffling point about Russians needing suffering to actually be happy.
Wheeler is pretty merciless, although, to give credit where credit is due, she is also quite funny and engaging. But her humor borders on mean-spirited in her constant pointing out of strange peculiarities of her hosts, tutors and travel companions in a way that often comes off as mocking and condescension. I felt uncomfortable reading this and imagining some of the people described reading their descriptions and feeling mortified.
Wheeler doesn't hold back on the criticism of Putin Russia politics either, and those are the parts that are done actually well and pithy snark is engaging indeed. But the connections between the parts, the jumping around between styles and centuries and themes on one page, relying on geography to connect it all — all that seemed a bit disjointed, maybe because in the end, the main character of this book is not Russia and not the writers but Sara Wheeler herself as the writers promised in the title really are little but set dressing to her travelogue. And I don’t think I was prepared for her to take center stage over the subjects that attracted me to this book, and I found that I just don’t care all that much for her personal accounts and gripes about bad train food or spotty wi-fi or comments on her host’s bosomless appearance.
—————
A few little gripes that I just need to get off my chest:
— a part where Wheeler bluntly states about Lermontov’s poem: “Rereading it now, I don’t think it’s much good. He was a prose writer. That said, Russians know him best for his lyrical and narrative verse.” But we spend what feels like a third of the book reading about her struggles to learn Russian, and we know she’s not fluent in it based on her own admissions — so can she really determine the relative qualities of Lermontov’s prose and poetry in the original Russian, or was she judging translators’ work?
— “The semi-forgotten poet Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet” — she apparently means a poet whose poems every Soviet (and now I presume Russian) schoolchild was required to memorize. Little-known to Wheeler (who, again, seems to rely on translated works) doesn’t mean forgotten in his country.
—————
In the end, Sara Wheeler is a funny and engaging writer, but to me this book lacked cohesiveness and depth, and was superficially interesting but without much of an impact. Had it been just a travelogue, I would probably been able to cut it more slack, but her choice of inclusion of literary “greats” in a breezy and superficially sensational manner made it feel slight and disjointed. Maybe if I knew less of the topics described I would have been charmed by the breezy snark — but as it stands, I wasn’t too impressed. It’s not bad - but not that good either.
2.5 - 3 stars.
——————
Recommended by: Left Coast Justin