15 november

Today I started reading Anna Karenina—a book to which I’ve referred many, many times, with a pretty workable understanding of its contents and also a serviceable ability to relate it to discussions with both AP Literature students in America and also students and teachers in Ukraine who grew up reading it in Russian. “Happy readers are all alike, unhappy readers like to commiserate,” redundantly clever AP Literature students might have quipped. Ukrainians, however, would nod with strong certainty to any reference, easily claiming Tolstoy. As an aside, it’s sometimes hard to tell what aspects of Russian culture will be accepted by Ukraine or Ukrainians, although this certainly varies with your location and the feelings of your interlocutor. As another aside, I never used this word (interlocutor) before I came to work in the Applied Linguistics Department of a National University in Ukraine. Instead, like a fool, I used the much more commonly used but admittedly more awkward phrase “person to whom you are speaking”.

Back on the starting side, it’s wonderful to be able to go to a library and get a book that’s in English AND that I’m interested in reading. The books that I read while in Ukraine were mostly all in English—although there were a few in Ukrainian, I can’t say that I made it the whole way through anything very substantial (is five pages of Twilight in Ukrainian ‘substantial’? is there any number of pages of Twilight in any language that would count as substantial? Sorry, sorry.). However, it was pretty rare that the books I ended up reading were much more than just that—books I ended up reading. Only three books came with me to Ukraine: A Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, The House of the Spirits, by Isabelle Allende, and The Voice That Is Great Within Us, a collection of 20^th century American poetry. And yes, although there was once a time that I could have read La casa de los espíritus in Spanish, that time was not while I was in Ukraine: All three of these books were in English.

So, what to do? Work on my upper body strength, then hold up a giant English book magnet? Look hopeful? Ask Santa? Make an Amazon wish list? Beg, borrow, and steal? Live in an oblast (state) capital so travelers would have to pass through to make transportation connections and drop off their heavy, already-read books? Host a variety of meetings and other gatherings to bring people into contact with each other and especially me in order to promote book-sharing along with the, uh, community development activities, and stuff? Smile a lot? Say yes whenever anyone asked if I’d like to read ___?

Yes, yes, yes.

If I gave you a list, you could probably guess which are books from my Amazon wish list—or could you? You could probably guess which are books I was thrilled to find in the Volunteer lounge at the Peace Corps office in Kyiv—or could you? It’s really a toss-up. I read all kinds of everything, and in the order received.

  

There was one particular period in which I read A Night to Remember, which is about the sinking of the Titanic, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which is about, well, the end of everything, perhaps including hope… then I think it was A People’s Tragedy, which was about the Russian Revolution, and was actually amazingly interesting and well-written, but you get the idea. It was pretty heavy. Winter doesn’t have to be cold and depressing, but reading those kinds of books really helps it along.

So, you’re right, I’m familiar with irony. I’m back in the US, I can choose anything I want, but... I just read a collection of short stories by Italo Calvino, including “The Watcher”, which swirls around the tragic absurdity of the situations of the main character, an election observer stationed at a sanitarium for the physically and mentally ill... annnnd now I’m reading Anna Karenina. She’s riding on a train, there’s a blizzard, and things are darkening up. Bring on the winter!