Please note: I was trying out different themes for the site and a few recent comments got deleted. My apologies for this mistake.
How do we face life’s seemingly insurmountable problems? For Stephen Monroe, an unsuccessfully self-employed typesetter still in love with his ex-wife, Mary, the only acceptable thing to do is to hang in there and fight — for love, for what he believes in, and for the voice inside him that’s struggling to be heard. With […]
When twelve-year old Jule runs away from home in search of a mystical goatherding vagabond, he is unprepared for life on the backroads of Georgia. Jule must confront a strange menagerie of adults, from the pathetic to the comic to the depraved, and shield a young girl from the depradations of harsh life in the […]
Officially declaring myself overwhelmed, I’m changing plans for August and will read some ebooks I’ve been wanting to tackle. I’ve downloaded three that should help me get through everything. The first two aren’t too long so I should have something up on them soon. I’m impressed with the quality of output from the self-publishing firms […]
Between work (the joys of a start-up), home (fortunately everyone survived a camping weekend in one piece–each), and now having to completely reinstall everything on my computer I’m way behind on everything. My apologies for the lack of posts. Hopefully I’ll be back to a normal schedule soon…
and we won’t go into how soon it will be to see if she still needs / feeds / etc. me. A picture from a day I couldn’t stop smiling…
I had a long post on this, but I’ll shorten my comments on this viral video…brilliant on so many levels. One of my favorite songs, ever. And a book and movie that I couldn’t stand. Which is why laughing at it probably makes me enjoy it that much more. (Warning–simulated violence and sex.) I posted […]
Preparations for Hunt by Evgraf Krendovsky (1836) Picture sourceI come back to Turgenev’s own description of this book (which I quoted on the resources post): “Much has come out pale and scrappy, much is only just hinted at, some of it’s not — right, oversalted or undercooked — but there are other notes pitched exactly […]
A brief post on the last nine stories in (my version of) A Sportsman’s Notebook: “The Singers”, “Pyotr Petrovich Karataev”, “The Rendezvous”, “Prince Hamlet of Shchigrovo”, “Chertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin”, “The End of Chertopkhanov”, “The Live Relic”, “The Knocking”, and “Forest and Steppe”. The text and other links related to A Sportsman’s Notebook can be found […]
Landscape with Oaks by Alexey Savrasov (1850s) Picture sourceA brief post on the next nine stories in A Sportsman’s Notebook: “Bezhin Meadow”, “ Kasyan from Fair Springs”, “ The Bailiff”, “The Estate Office”, “The Bear”, “Two Landowners”, “Lebedyan”, “Tatyana Borisovna and Her Nephew”, and “Death”. The text and other links related to A Sportsman’s Notebook […]
Since I’m reading several of Turgenev’s works, I thought I would take a take a quick look at Reading Turgenev, the first half of William Trevor’s 1991 book Two Lives. For a brief editorial review and a good summary, see the Amazon.com product page—the May 19, 2000 review covers the book fairly well. While the […]
There is July, and then there is Turgenev’s July. Here is the wonderful and magical first paragraph of “Bezhin Meadow” (translation by Charles and Natasha Hepburn): It was a beautiful July day, one of those days which come only after long spells of settled weather. From the earliest morning the sky is clear; the dawn […]
The Overgrown Pond by Valentin Serov (1888) Picture sourceA brief discussion covering the first seven of the “sketches”: Khor and Kalinich, Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife, Raspberry Water, The Country Doctor, My Neighbor Radilov, Ovsyanikov the Freeholder, Lgov. The text and other links related to A Sportsman’s Notebook can be found here. All quotes are […]
During my week off, I finally read The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss that I mentioned a couple of months ago. Several books I’ve read lately raises the question of what makes a successful history when little trustworthy material is available on the subject. Persistent use of qualifiers like “perhaps”, “he might have seen”, and […]
I’ve been enjoying a week off from work and staying offline as much as possible. Here’s wishing everyone a happy Fourth of July.
We’re reading less Dr. Seuss and working our way through ‘first reader’ books with the oldest. But I did like this line from an interview with Dr. Philip Nel, professor of English at Kansas State University and director of the graduate program in children’s literature (who knew there was such a thing? and would Dr. […]
A Sportsman’s Notebook by Ivan Turgenev Translated by Charles and Natasha Hepburn The Cresset Press, London, 1950 I am glad that this book has come out; it seems to me that it will remain my mite cast into the treasure chest of Russian literature, to use the phraseology of the school-book… Much has come out […]
Book Illustration for ‘The Day Before’ by Ivan Turgenev, 1947 Konstatin RudakovThe text of “First Love” can be found at Project Gutenberg, Google Books, or The Literature Network A summary is provided at Wikipedia My post on links to Turgenev resources can be found here The library copy of “First Love” I read was translated by […]
Portrait of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev By Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1879) Picture sourceA few links on Turgenev. I’ll link to individual works as I cover them. BIOGRAPHY Wikipedia entry ONLINE WORKS Most online works use translations by Constance Garnett Works at Google Books or Project Gutenberg Audio works available at LibriVox ADDITIONAL (most of my previous links […]
No, not the picture of me from August 1982 (which I ran across this morning when looking for other files). Someone placed a hold on The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel at the library and I can’t renew it. Who knew it was in high demand? Unfortunately I had checked it out several weeks before I […]
Totally off-topic to anything and everything, but… Last night I watched We Jam Econo, the documentary on the Minutemen. It was 25 years ago that I last saw them, and the Minutemen t-shirt I had from that date was one of my prize possessions for quite a while. The documentary is decent, although I would […]