Book drooling

There’s a new translation of the Arabian Nights out in the UK and I have read some good reviews of it. Three hardcover volumes in a nice box by Penguin Classics. Don’t they look gorgeous? I have been drooling over it since I started seeing the reviews. Unfortunately with a pricetag of 125 British Pounds, I will pass on this one. Unless I win the lottery or the books are published in paperback. I don’t even want to know how much that is dollars or euros.

In case you want to drool along with me, reviews are here, here and here.

I will be back soon with book banter, an award to pass on and more. I have six books to review and they are all review-worthy. I have been a bit under the weather lately (the result of a cold and too many birthday and farewell parties) and couldn’t make myself sit down and blog.

I wish all of my readers a very good, happy, healthy and successful 2009!

Russen zien ze vliegen by Peter d’Hamecourt

Russen zien ze vliegen by Peter d’Hamecourt is the final book I have read for the Russian Reading Challenge this year. There are two other books I finished that I still need to write a review for, which I hope to do next week. Together with De Russische kater, this is probably the best of the books on Russia by Dutch journalists that I read this year.

D’Hamecourt has lived in Russia for the last twenty years and worked as a correspondent for Dutch TV and radio to a lesser extent for printed media. Russen zien ze vliegen (which literally translates as Russians see them fly, an expression meaning something like ‘Russians are imagining things’) is a collection of the columns and some other articles d’Hamecourt wrote for print media and media-blogs over the years. In the book they appear chronologically, divided in five sections: The final years of the Soviet-Union (1989-1991); the first years of Boris Yeltsin (1992-1995); Yeltsin’s later years (1996-1999); Vladimir Putin’s first years (2000-20004); and Putin’s last years as president (2005-2007). The book was published in late 2007, so the  2008 presidential elections are only referred to as a future event.

I read the book in less than a week, which was probably not the best way to read it, considering that it consists of columns of about one and a half to two pages. That makes this book more one to pick up every now and then and read a bit. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book. I especially enjoyed the earlier parts, revisiting the demise of the Soviet-Union and the utter chaos that reigned in the first years after the Soviet empire fell apart. The subjects are mostly taken from everyday life, with lots of examples of how politics and economics affected the life of the ordinary Muscovite. D’Hamecourt talks with his neighbors, the fruitsellers in his neighborhood market, taxidrivers and many others; they were the inspiration for most of his pieces. D’Hamecourt notes the surprises and sometimes absurd situations one encounters living in Moscow. He does this in a nice way, though. Throughout the book you feel that he enjoys life in Moscow with all its quirkiness and unusual situations and encounters. All in all I found this a nice, light, entertaining book from which you still take away a lot of new things.

De Russische kater by Laura Starink

Another book written by a Dutch journalist who knows Russia well. De Russische kater (Dutch for The Russian Hangover) is arguably the best of the lot I have read this year. I finished this book in two days and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Laura Starink is a journalist who has long worked for the best newspaper in Holland, and incidentally the one that over the years has reported about Russia and the former Soviet republics consistently more often and better than other Dutch newspapers. Starink spent time in the Soviet-Union in the late seventies studying Russian, and over a decade later as the newspaper’s correspondent in Moscow during the era of perestroika and the implosion of the Soviet-Union. In 2007 she returned to Russia trying to find out what happened to the high expectations people had in the late eighties, early nineties and how Russians had managed in the years since then.

The result of this quest is De Russische kater. The book consists of eleven portraits of Russians from different walks of life, some fairly well-known, but mostly unknown, some Starink interviewed in the course of her work, some she has known for some twenty years. Initially it seems that the people depicted are not really representing ‘your average Russian’: they all live and work in Moscow and they all are to a certain extent successful in politics, business, culture, education, TV and other spheres. Taken together, though, the interviews give a good idea of the development of Russia in the last twenty years and of the current state of the country. All interviewees are of what in the West is known as the babyboom generation, born between 1946 and 1966. At first I thought this a bit of a limitation, until I realized that this segment of the population was old enough to consciously experience the late eighties and nineties and that they already had their professional careers underway at this time. I ended up seeing the age of the interviewees not as a negative aspect anymore, because they are probably of the generation that can best compare their experiences before and after the end of the communist era.

The first portrait is of former longtime parliamentarian Vladimir Ryzhkov (link in Russian) and is as much a portrait of him as an introduction to the political situation in Russia over the past twenty years. The second portrait is based on an interview with former prime-minister Yegor Gaydar, who is better known for introducing the shock therapy to Russia, throwing the country into the deep end of capitalism in the early nineties. This shock therapy, the wild capitalism and financial crisis of the nineties obviously return over and over again in the later interviews, so the first two interviews are not only portraits of Gaydar and Ryzhkov, but also in a way an introduction to Russia after communism.

Some of the ther people portrayed are former dissidents and current human rights activists Lyudmila Saraskina and Arseniy Roginskiy (director of Memorial), a scientist who founded and heads one of the view relatively successful science-institutes in the country, TV- and Radio personality Viktor Shenderovich (in Russian; his blog, also in Russian, is here), a history teacher who tries to teach her students to look at texts and other historical sources critically and to ask questions, a lawyer, an architect, and a businessman. Their personal histories and views on the current situation in Russia under Vladimir Putin (the book was published early this year, before the presidential elections in which Putin’s handpicked successor Dimitry Medvedev won as expected) are given plenty of space. Most or the interviewed are critical of Vladimir Putin and the regression of freedom and democracy, but some more so than others.

If you know Dutch and are interested in contemporary Russia, I highly recommend De Russische kater , as it gives a good overview of the Putin-era, going into much more detail than what you get from the mainstream media.

I would love if Starink decided to write a book of a similar setup with portraits of younger Russians in their twenties and thirties to see what their thoughts are and how they have experienced the last twenty years and the current regression in economic and political freedom, freedom of speech and freedom to criticize the authorities, among others. Such a book would have a very different atmosphere, but would not be less interesting.

Dewey, thank you for everything

I just read this announcement on Dewey’s blog, posted by her husband:

I’ve got a piece of sad news to deliver. Dewey passed away on Tuesday evening.
[...]
My wife was unwell and in a lot of pain; I don’t believe she ever discussed that side of her life here, and I’ve no desire to go against her boundaries, just know she was in a lot of pain. I am sad that my wife is no longer here, but she’s not in pain any more.

I am sitting in front of my computer with tears in my eyes. All of a sudden the day doesn’t seem so bright anymore. Dewey was one of the pillars of the bookblogging community. She was one of the most prolific bookbloggers and an overall great and generous person. Dewey set up so many online events that have become “traditions” among bookbloggers: the 24-Hour Read-a-Thon, the Bookworms Carnival, Weekly Geeks, it was all her idea.

Sunday evening my mom sent me a textmessage saying that a bookish parcel had arrived at their place. I wasn’t expecting anything from anyone, so I told her to open it and tell me what was in it. A bit later I received a message back saying it was a Ruth Rendell mystery from Dewey.  She must have remembered this comment she made on one of my posts way back when.  Reading the book won’t be the same, now that Dewey is no longer with us.

Dewey will be missed sorely by many people all over the world who never met her. Thank you, for everything, dear Dewey.

Dewey leaves behind a husband and a son. I wish both of them all the strength in the world to deal with their huge loss.