End of August updates

Oh, it was so unbelievably hot in Toronto.  It didn't help that I was running extremely late (I had actually taken the morning off to get the kids registered in school -- cutting it close, but the school office really didn't open until this past Monday).  And I was bringing another heavy stack of books to drop off at work.  So I was sweating by the time I arrived.

Work has felt a bit like a vise with unrelenting pressure for a couple of weeks now.  That doesn't mean that I don't blow off a bit of steam (by writing posts for instance) but I've had to work a lot of extra hours to try to meet some tight deadlines, and then am finding that others are not keeping up their end.  But this should only last another two weeks and then things will revert to normal.  We might even hear if we won this big project, though the odds are not looking great at the moment.

In the meantime, I have put together a utility shelf in the basement, which has helped a bit, and am 75% done with a wardrobe (actually the second one I have built).  The quality is not great, and we'll need a better long-term solution one of these days.  In fact, I need to get a bit more glue tomorrow to make sure one of the hinges doesn't come loose.

I think two more weeks and I will be able to get the carpet down in the basement.  The final bookcase I bought (but haven't assembled) will help a lot, but I need to clear enough space to even construct it.  So it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem right now.

Creative chaos?

I could also use a few more short-term wins to make me feel that we are on the right track.  Maybe clearing out the living room enough that we can interview a baby sitter.  That would feel like a significant accomplishment right now.

Anyway, I just came across my copy Russian Thinkers, which I needed since I plan on interleaving Berlin's essays with various Russian works.  While this is more for myself to keep track of the scheme, anyone else is welcome to follow my approach.

X Dostoevsky - Demons, Part I
X Berlin - Russia and 1848
X Dostoevsky - Demons, Part II
X Berlin - The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia & German Romanticism in Petersburg and Moscow
X Dostoevsky - Demons, Part III
X Gogol - The Overcoat & Nevsky Prospect
X Berlin - Russian Populism
X Gogol - The Nose & Diary of a Madman
X Dostoevsky - The Double & The Gambler
X Berlin - Tolstoy and Enlightenment
X Tolstoy - Family Happiness & The Kreuzer Sonata
X Berlin - The Hedgehog and the Fox
X Tolstoy - The Cossacks & The Death of Ivan Ilych & The Devil
(Lessing - Briefing for a Descent into Hell)
X Berlin - Herzen and His Memoirs (in Against the Current)
X Herzen - Childhood, Youth and Exile
X Berlin - Herzen and Bakunin on Individual Liberty
X Herzen - Ends and Beginnings
X Berlin - Vissarion Belinsky & Alexander Herzen
X Turgenev - A Sportsman's Sketches & Diary of a Superfluous Man
X Pushkin - Eugene Onegin (Johnston translation)
X Berlin - Intro to Fathers and Sons
X Turgenev - Fathers and Sons
X Berlin - The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West (in The Crooked Timber)
X Stoppard - The Coast of Utopia
X Tolstoy - Father Sergius & Hadji Murad
X Herzen - From the Other Shore (quite distinct from My Past and Thoughts)
X (Roth - The Antichrist)
X Dostoevsky - White Nights & The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
X Tsypkin - Summer In Baden Baden
X Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground & The Eternal Husband & A Gentle Creature
X Platonov - Soul & The Return
X Tolstoy - A Confession & Master and Man
X (Hogg - Memoirs of a Justified Sinner)
X Pushkin - Eugene Onegin (Falen translation)
X Tolstoy - The Forged Coupon
X Krzhizhanovsky - Autobiography of a Corpse
X Platonov - Happy Moscow
X (Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus)
X Krzhizhanovsky - Memories of the Future
X Platonov - The Foundation Pit

I still need to find the Herzen, but I have a couple of weeks for that.  After I plow through these, I will finally return to Von Rezzori's An Ermine in Czernopol ✓.  This is a vastly different reading program than the one I set out a few months back, but there is a certain logic to it, closing out a lot of loose ends in my basic Russian literacy.  (And fall is a good time to read Russian authors.  I've decided to update my profile with something a bit more sombre until I am through this revised list.)  I'd still have to read War and Peace some day, and perhaps Oblomov and just possibly A Hero of Our Time, but I'd certainly have the core covered after I got through this list,* on top of the Russian classics I have already read, of course (pretty much all of Bulgakov for instance). Now that doesn't cover the writers of the Stalin era and after very well (aside from Bulgakov), but I am working my way through Vasily Grossman and now Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky and Andrey Platonov.  I suppose those will just have to get fit in based on whenever they turn up from the library.

I guess there is just time for a quick catnap and then back to work. 

Edit (Jan 28, 2015) I finally have gotten through this list, which did grow a bit since August.  I read some pretty incredible stuff along the way, but I need a fairly long break from Russians now.

* How could I have forgotten Gogol's Dead Souls ✓ (despite his turn to a very conservative Russian nationalism towards the end of his life)?  Also, I have to give serious consideration to reading Pushkin's Eugene Onegin ✓.  I've sort of held off, since it truly is meant to be a novel in poetry; it is therefore impossible to accurately convey in English while retaining poetic form and meaning.  The best two poetic translations appear to be by James Falen and Walter Arndt.  Both have their admirers (and serious detractors).  Probably both translations are worth reading; still, I find that not having a clear choice makes me move Eugene Onegin down in my TBR list.  It's not like I don't have a lot of other things on my plate, and this Russian detour will probably prove to be pretty long.