Rich

A 19th-Century Russian Eliza Hamilton

Revisado: 11-28-21

TGW is satisfyingly well-researched, vivid, and seemingly complete (40% of the book is notes/biblio). It's fitting that Dostoyevsky's real-life wife Anna would be a memorable, complex character in the canon of Russian literature. Loving wife to a gambling addict, or independent feminist? Dostoyevskaya lived to demonstrate that a question like that is a fool's choice.

***
“If he thinks I am his slave, there to obey his every whim, he makes a great mistake,” she told her diary. “It’s time he abandoned this delusion of his."
***

Kaufman places many of FD's novels in context of Anna's timeline, which gives each title an added dimension for the familiar reader. (Kaufman also provides full plot summaries for his four major titles--an upcoming spoiler is somewhat predictable if you want to skip ahead.) TGW starts out a little slow by necessity, but by the time Fydor and Anna marry early in the book I was all-in.

***
“I cannot live without you, Anya,” he told her while kissing her good night late one evening in Geneva. “It was for those like you that Christ came. I say this not because I love you, but because I know you.”
***

TGW is must-read for any Russian lit fan, and also stands on its own for the uninitiated.

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Make Print IJ Your First Read

Revisado: 04-26-20

Audio IJ is such a massive ambitious project, but -so much- gets lost in the port.

The audio title will have value for IJ fans wanting to re-read this book, or first-time print readers looking to review what they've just read/prime for what they're about to read. To boot: the additional footnotes title (released by this publisher at a later date) is required.

Pratt's stamina is otherworldly but I believe the narration comes off as too dramatic, which doesn't create space to let you form your own voices of characters in your mind.

As for print IJ (use an e-reader with dictionary/wiki features... you'll need it): it is a fantastic, sincere, mindbending journey that was well (WELL) worth the four months of my read time.

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Starry, Starry Night

Revisado: 07-31-19

I had 'The Idiot' at one (ONE!) star at the halfway point of this book. No decrepit apartments and bloody axes here in high-society StP: just 400+ pages of Jane Austen he-said-she-said banter with a myriad of characters who seem major but aren't.

But dammit: I stuck it through, and FyDo had a payoff waiting for me at the end. Prince Myshkin resonates with me -very- deeply (for better or worse), especially during my teens and 20s. Some things to know for the embarking reader:

- FyDo wrote this novel serially; even -he- didn't know how it was going to end until it ended. So if it seems that the book is searching for footing in the middle 50%, that's because -it was.-
- Nastasya, Rogozhin, Agayla and the Prince are your main characters (and two of them will not be present for ~75% of the book). For all other minor characters, it might be worth your time to read full analyses online so you can weather the book and understand their foil roles.
- Nastasya's character was based on a real-life tryst that FyDo had with a notably younger woman.

Themes of religion, compassion, love, abnormal psychology, and falsehoods abound. Post-read, I've had trouble getting the themes and characters out of my head. The theme of a society outsider sticks out most for me: Myshkin in Switzerland looking at the outdoors, wanting to be a part of that natural world, then moving to StP.

This was one of the hardest reads I've had to slug through in the past 100 books; Shmoop and the audiobook were very helpful. I'm glad I took the train ride. Pocket notes below.


____
Kolya ippolit and Mishkin, honest people living in a world of greed and self interest.
Mishkin thinks he has a read on Nastashya.
Nastashya in the center of a marriage twist, with deals, dowry, and alliances. Ganya and some other guy.
General his wife and the three daughters.
Lebodoskys monologue of the rails creating weaker souls.
Ippolist monologue on the rich wasting their lives away while he only has months to live.
Lizaveta not wanting Myshkin to marry, but silently in her heart she knows it's the right thing.
Aglya acting all manic and Sadie Hawkins in the presence of Myshkin. Accusation of trust with Nastasya is interesting.

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'Quiet Don' was His Talisman

Revisado: 06-17-19

"Literature cannot be judged by courts... ideas can only be combated with ideas, not camps and jails." --Lidiia Chukovskaia

I read 'Scribe' in the hopes of learning more about Quiet Don, Sholokov, and its controversial position in world literature. 'Stalin's Scribe' covers the the controversial position very well, Sholokov pretty well, and Quiet Don (somewhat surprisingly) very little.

I really liked the primer/abridged history on the Soviet Union (I can't imagine a book like this not covering this topic). I really liked learning how Sholokov worked the system, battling conflicts of his love of the Don and his supposed writing career with necessary loyalties to Moscow. Without question his ability to walk this decades-long tightrope would have been hampered (if not impossible) without his Quiet Don talisman.

This book is very political, and needs more details about Sholokov's early life/family life and the history/inspriation of the characters and plots of Quiet Don itself (both plagarism and unique aurthorship is recognized by Boeck) to really present a full picture. 'Scribe' did not grip me as tightly as 'The Zhivago Affair' for these reasons, combined with the fact that protagonists on the run (e.g. Pasternak: tracked by the government, extramarital affair, etc.) simply hold your attention more than the alternative (e.g. Sholokov: protected by the government, struggling alchoholic).

'Scribe' is a challenging, but well-researched read. If you're looking for a entry point into Russian literature, start with Doctor Zhivago/The Zhivago Affair. For those with an already-developed love for Russian lit, 'Scribe' (and for that matter: 'Quiet Don', aka 'And Quiet Flows the Don' + 'The Don Flows Home to the Sea') is certainly worth your time.

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You Won't Make Small of McTeague

Revisado: 03-14-19

"Gold is where you find it." --McTeague

Oh Naturalism, how you speak to this card-carrying member of Generation X. How wildly important it is for us to make conscious, deliberate decisions for ourselves. How tragic is the alternative that human nature provides.

Sure: Norris' dialogs are long-winded, but this is offset by Kandinsky's lovely period narration. There's no in between with Kandinsky in this title: you will either love him or hate him.

Spoiler pocket notes (tl;dr) below.


---
<SPOILERS>
Dentist - Sheltered from society. Giant. Simple minded.
Friend - Ebullient, drinking buddy. Half baked opinions.
dressmaker - sheltered.
Trina - unlocking his manhood in the dentist chair. Cousin of friend. Kissed by McTeague while under ether.
Rivalry with Friend for Trina.
Zirkov - gold gold gold!
Markus lets McT have Trina. Good friends. Dogs fight in backyard.
"The man desiring the woman only for what she withholds, the woman worshipping the man for that what she yields up to him."
"Er... I don't know what I want!" (at the ticket booth).
Enjoying projections of themselves at the theater.
"...the lottery was a great charity, the friend of the people, a vast beneficent machine that recognized neither rank nor wealth nor station."
Pole jealous of winnings. Marcus jealous that he isn't with Trina and the (more important!?) money.
Trina economical. Falling deeper in love.
Marcus pissed. Mac content with tooth gift. Starts losing the ability to sleep.
"An immense joy seized upon him: the joy of possession"
"Yielding all at once to that stage desire of being conquered and subdued."
"Trians affection for her old bear grew in spite of herself. She began to love him more and more, not for what he was but for what she had given up to him."
Mac and marcus fight. Mac breaks marcus' arm.
Maria and Zirkov marry. Baby born and died. There are no gold plates, Zirkov gets violent. Marcus protects Maria, takes Zs knife away.
Marcus moves away. Life is happy with Trina. Served quack notice, probably via Marcus. Trina wished Mac would have killed him.
Moved into flat. Keeps tooth, wedding photo and bouquet. Trina hordes money and lies. Mac took manufacturers job, but gets fired in hard times.
Trina takes his comp. Trina thinks hes hounding money. Mac outraged, soaking wet with whiskey from friend. It's all Trina's fault from Macs perspective.
Trina loves her money. Commiserate with Maria, both are abused. Maria now murdered, Zirkov apparent suicide.
Old neighbor crying over selling out book binding, but finds love with dressmaker.
Trina traumatized by nightmares, Mac hits her to fall asleep.
Mac walks alone all day, eats fish that he catches.
Murders Trina. Goes roaming to the coal mine, train south to ranch.
Death valley. Rattlesnake. Going mad in total silence.
</SPOILERS>

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20th Century China in a Russian Lit Motif

Revisado: 06-13-18

"One thing I have learned, dear Sparrow, is that light is never still and solid and so it is with love. Light can be split into many directions. Its nature is to break apart." --Comrade Glass Eye

'Where to begin with this review?' is an apt question for my writing of these notes for Thien's 2016 historical fiction novel, for continuous life cycles (in all their varieties) are one of 'Do Not Say's' main themes.

So many themes: music/silence, writing/composition/self-expression, Chinese history/government, freedom, identity, remorse, and the like. Thien weaves her characters into the major milestones of actual Chinese history (The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen 1989) a la Tolstoy, diving in and out of macro and micro details across a music conservatory and three generations of families.

I found 'Do Not Say' profoundly moving. I really had no idea about some of the horrors of 20th century China until now, which Thien brings to full color. While I haven't fully grasped how this book changed me yet (an increased appreciation of freedoms in the US for starters) I know it certainly changed--and will continue to change--me for the better. Angela Lin's narration was great; the print book has lots to enjoy as well (Chinese characters, jianpu musical notation, and the like). Pocket notes (tl;dr) below.

-----
- Jiang Kai: did what he needed to survive.
- Zhuli: stuck to her beliefs.
- Sparrow: caught in the middle.
- The drawer of glass eyes: it is better to see, or be seen?
- "The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that lives invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last." --Zhuli
- "[Sparrow had] been thinking about the quality of sunshine, that is, how daylight wipes away the stars and the planets, making them invisible to human eyes. If one needed the darkness in order to see the heavens, might daylight be a form of blindness? Could it be that sound was also a form of deafness? If so, what was silence?"
- Jiang Kai's reaction to Ai-ming abandoning the phone call.
- Ai-ming's inability to process 1989.
- He Luting on the television: "Shame on you!"
- Zhuli's thoughts at the conservatory: "The present, Sparrow seemed to say, is all we have, yet it is the one thing we will never learn to hold in our hands."
- "I wondered: what happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?" --Jiang Kai

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Expect Nothing

Revisado: 03-31-18

'The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself. The mountains exist simply, which I do not.' --Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

On the surface, this book seemed very much in my wheelhouse. By the end--for better or worse--I was happy the read was over. I grappled with this title for several reasons:

- I couldn't ever get rid of my frustration--if not outright anger--at the protagonist who chose to selfishly cope with his wife's death in his mid-40s by taking a multi-month, high-risk trip to the most remote inhabited region of the planet with a pocket full of cannabis at the expense of his teary-eyed son who doesn't really know when his only surviving parent is going to return home.
- Books have a well-established plot, and no loose ends upon conclusion. We don't hear much about his son. The relationship with his wife is scant with detail. There are distracting sections about yetis and (print only) his relationship with another woman and their drug experiments. 'The Snow Leopard' isn't a book. It's a journal.
- So much of the scenery in this book depends upon space and silence. It's tough to express and experience silence through an audiobook.
- The abridged production is half-baked: reel-to-reel noise, awkward splices, etc.

That said: there are nuggets of wisdom within TSL, it’s just that they are scattered and hard to get to. Much like the Dolpo gompas, I suppose. There are some quotes from Matthiessen’s teachers that are truly knockout when narrated by Matthiessen himself. The history of the region and the migration of Buddhism through China and Japan was great. The personality of Tukten comes through. No doubt Matthiessen has an appreciation for nature (though this appreciation gets repetitive).

Perhaps this whole read was a meta-exercise for me. Why am I disappointed with this title? Was I expecting something other than nothing? If nothing, perhaps that is my greatest takeaway. Pocket notes below for reference.

---------(tl;dr)---------

History of Saddahartma
Movement through China
Doing work for works sake
The lightheartedness of the Sherpas
Switzerland and the bowl
Etymology of Ohm Sarda Hatmi Um
The Smile
''Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being. '' -PM (in reference to Turgenevs Virgin Soil)
To clutch the mountain is to die.
The dust free mirror of buddhism symbolism, like the lake. Colorless, yet reflects everything.
Win my life by losing it, not by recklessness but acceptance, not passivity but non attachment.
The dropped pack in the stream: that happy-go-lucky spirit, that acceptance which is not fatalism but a deep trust in life, made me ashamed.
Sakyamuni laments: don't spend decades learning to walk on water when you can be ferried across for a small coin.
Do not be heavy. Be light, light, full of light.
When your mind is empty like a valley or a canyon only THEN will you know the power of The Way -- Lao Tzu.
The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself. The mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no meaning. They are meaning.
Solitary meditation: the short path to true knowledge. The supreme form of existence. Requires the ultimate discipline.
I long to see the snow leopard. Yet to induce it by camera flash, crouched on a bait is not to see it.
Of course I'm happy here! Especially when I have no choice! Rinpoche.
They appealed to me with their permanence, that intensified the sense of my own transience. Perhaps this explains our greed for the few gobbets of experience in life.
The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment’ it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.
When I watch blue sheep, I must watch blue sheep, not be thinking about sex or danger... or the present. For this present, even while I think of it, is gone.
All other mountains are covered with snow, why is this one bare? I know this mountain because I am this mountain. If the snow leopard were to jump out of this stone and I perceive it, scared out of my wits, only then will I be truly free.
God offers man the choice of repose or truth, but not both.

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Great Intro to Epic Fiction

Revisado: 03-04-18

"...as long as ignorance and misery exist in this world, books like the one you are about to read are, perhaps, not entirely useless." --Victor Hugo (Les Miserables, Epigraph)

The best part about reading through classic lit in my 40s without any academic background: every book is a surprise. I didn't get more than a few hours into Les Mis before I yelled "I'm reading Tolstoy!" I was wholly unaware that Hugo had a profound influence on Tolstoy's W&P.

That said: Les Mis comes off as a structurally 'junior' version of W&P. (That's a complement to both parties.) The LM storyline is more linear, and there are 10x fewer characters. Content-wise, there is still tons to love about LM: every other day had some sublime quote or passage. There were too many quotes to keep track (pocket notes below). Perhaps the scene that moved me the most was middle-aged Valjean ripping Montparnasse a new ear on what constitues the 'easy' life, and Hugo's subsequent attack on epicureanism. Or perhaps Cosette's doll. So tough to choose.

In only my sixth year of being a father to my two daughters, the Valjean/Cosette allegories struck me to the core. (I'm having a very difficult time convincing myself I will not suffer the same fate as Valjean N years from now if my Cosette finds her Marius. Yet, it was Valjean who freed Cosette in her youth. God--such a good novel.)

I listened to the 1980 musical after reading the novel. The novel is much darker than the musical (which is to say: I preferred the novel), though the muscial expands upon Eponine more so than in the novel (which is very much for the better).

If you've thought about tackling your first epic audiobook, the Rose/Guidall LM is a great place to start. To whet your palette further: Chernow's 'Alexander Hamilton', Les Mis, and W&P make for a trilogy unlike any other. Pocket notes below.

_____

Memorable scenes:
Mothers death scene
Waterloo
Helping Cosette with the bucket and the doll at the fairgrounds.
The convent and the prison.
JV didn't want to lock Cosette in the convent, didn't want to take away her freedom.
Cosette and her father's relationship as she blossoms.
Monologue on work by JV.
Monologue on love by Marius.
Etiology of slang. Suffering.
Mankind will be saved when we feed our minds like we feed our stomachs.
The darkness of the Parisian streets and the toxin of the St Marie bell running.
There is no civil war. Only just and unjust war.
Marius had not lived long enough to know that nothing is more inevitable than the impossible, and what you must always forsee is the unseeable.
The sewers.

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Bedtime Reading for Insomniacs

Revisado: 11-26-17

Akido--according to Wikipedia--is 'the martial arts principle or tactic of blending with an attacker's movements for the purpose of controlling their actions with minimal effort'. In this case, stress is the attacker. McGonigal's 'The Upside of Stress' is your akido.

In this title, McGonigal states that viewing stress as an intrusion to what-would-be-our-otherwise-normal life kills people. How many of us have spent months/years/decades wishing for a particular stress to go away? Of those, how many of us have actually succeeded in that wish? Such wishing and resisting has been proven to age a person quickly; McGonigal presents a cogent, engaging and empirical argument that all of us need to take a different (and initially non-intuitive) approach to the stresses that bind us.

If McGonigal's TED talk doesn't speak to you, then perhaps spend your credit elsewhere (and be thankful for your well-balanced mindset). For me, this title was earth-shifting: I wish I would have read this book twenty years ago, but am glad that I didn't wait any longer. McGonigal's excellent self-narration adds a further degree of sincerity to the title. My roughly-edited pocket notes below for reference.

----- tl;dr -----

- Allow the larger forces of the world to move as they do: Those would don't believe aging is bad live longer. Those who trust others live longer.
- Strategies that backfire: showing smokers lung cancer photos. Shaming women for being overweight.
- Stress is an overused term, ranging from the trivial to the traumatic. McGonigal's definition: stress is something that arises when something you care about is at stake. Thus, stress and meaning are irrovacably linked.
- Transform your relationship with stress: rethink and embrace it. Choose to see the good in it.
- Mindset reset: how you think about something can transform it's affect on you. 'The effect you expect is the effect you get.'
- Milkshake experiment: body's chemical reaction is a function of what's on the label, not what's in the milkshake.
- Mock interview experiment: more positive chemical reactions for those subjects who were told that stress is good.
- Placebo effects are temporary. Mindset effects are permanent.
- Those who believe stress is beneficial are less depressed and more satisfied with their lives.
- View stress as a challenge, not an overwhelming problem. Find meaning in difficult circumstances.
- Mindsets do not correlate with optimism, the amount of stress in your life, mindfulness, or the ability to tolerate uncertainty.
- Those unaccepting of stress tend to be avoidant, distract themselves, turn to alcohol.
- The belief that stress is helpful is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Experiment: freshmen ivy league school one-hour intervention on belonging closed the minority GPA gap
- Three steps to stress: acknowledge it, embrace that you care about something, make use of the energy that stress gives you.
- Steps to an effective intervention: learn the new point of view, do an exercise, share the idea.
- View stress as flexible, not black and white. Choose the side you want.
- Successful stress coping: Have hope. Make a choice. Find meaning. You are not a lab rat in an uncontrolled, meaningless and unpredictable scenario.
- Stress responses: fight/flight, challenge, tend/befriend.
- The stress paradox: a meaningful life is a stressful life. Higher stress yields a less depressed society.
- Stress awakens the search for meaning.
- The mindset that stress is an intrusion is what kills.
- Understand your values, not just what is good. Create a narrative of personal adequacy.
- Avoiding stress creates more stress.
- 'Just another cold dark night on the side of Mount Everest.'
- You are most likely to become a victim of your own stress when you forget the context in which it arises.
- Experiment: Bell Telephone employees: the healthiest took action on whatever they could, and either changed the situation or changed how the situation affected them.
- Hardiness: the courage to grow and change from stress.
- Experiment: practice GREs. the students with highest stress plus mindset intervention did the best.
- Physiological anxiety is different than worry. The latter you can transform. The former will always be there. (Your palms sweat on a first date because you're close to something you want.)
- When people are instructed they can handle stress, it works.
- Experiment: videotaped speech with planted critics. Mindset intervention was better than calming intervention or distraction by video games. Experiment done with people with severe anxiety disorder.
- Those with an anxiety disorder have the same physiological reaction as others, they just believe it to be higher than others.
- Most people cannot choose the stress they have in their lives. You can choose how you deal with it. The one resource you always have is yourself.
- Stress trigger chemicals that make you social, smart and brave.
- Electing to care for others releases the same chemicals as stress.
- Experiment: helping others--even the smallest gesture--alleviated time scarcity in subjects more than awarding them more time.
- 'Greater than self goals' have a similar effect: define yoru job not by your skills, but by what larger purpose it serves. Personal goals are more likely to be achieved when greater-than-self goals are the focus.
- We tend to underestimate others' stress (re: everyone is happy on social media). Nothing is more universal in humanity than suffering.
- Make the invisible visible. Experiment: common suffering anonymous survey with a group of people.
- 'May we all know our own strength'
- Experiment: those most resistant to freezing water on the hand are those with the most past traumas.
- Those with the least amount of stress in their history tend to catastrophize.
- 'Shift and resist' - allows those with the most stress to be more healthy.
- Extreme traumas: 'It's not that X is good. I just found the good in X.' Need to acknowledge both the good and bad--don't just blow sunshine.
- Restorative journalism creates vicarious resilience in a community. Example: 9/11 widow who eventually adopted more children.
- Stress is harmful when it isolates, creates inadequacy, and feels random/meaningless.
- Create yearly stress goals that challenge and create growth, not yearly resolutions.

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Imperfect Storytelling; Powerful Allegory

Revisado: 11-03-17

I found Endurance to be a memorable read, but with exceptions.

The against-all-odds allegory that Endurance provides to the reader is powerful. POWERFUL. Have you ever make a mistake in your life? A big mistake? How did you respond? How does it measure up to being stranded in the most remote place on the planet in the early 20th century without shelter and the fate of 25+ human souls in your hands? There’s so much to chew on from an allegorical perspective; to that end, this book was worth the voyage.

Still, I was left with a lot of wanting. First: the story has a tone of heroism. Let’s be perfectly clear: this Antarctic expedition was a GIANT miscalculation. Shackleton sought personal glory, and paid dearly. This story isn’t so much about heroism as it is about being face-to-face with death. Second: there seems to be a lot of fabricated storytelling (conversations, etc.). Perhaps I’m wrong, but I certainly wondered how much of these details were truly recorded in the voyager’s diaries. (2018 UPDATE: I -was- wrong. There was -a lot- of research and written accounts that lent to the details in this book. Wow.) Third: what happened to all these people and their families AFTER this traumatic ordeal? There’s an entire second book that could be written on that topic, and I’m sure that would be a wildly interesting read.

Finally: the dogs. Dear God, the dogs. This book was especially fitting to read in October when the local climate dropped 40+ degrees over the span of one week.

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