Book 17: Three Sisters

One of my 5/5 challenges this year is to read five dramas. Since I hadn't started a single one and it's mid-March, it was time to get going.



I'm sure I've actually read this before. And I really do love Chekhov. But I was often so confused. Why is Olga suddenly crying? I thought Masha left--why is she still here?

I looked to see if there was a production of it I could watch, since that's the way it's supposed to be enjoyed. I found a couple from the 70s and they got terrible reviews because "nothing happens." Well, yes, that's pretty much the point of the play, my friends.

So maybe I'll stick with Chekhov short stories. And plays in which something happens? Like Shakespeare, perhaps? We'll see.

Book 53: Coming Out of the Ice

Didja think I was going to stop reading? It felt (to me) like a long pause between books 52 and 53.

Maybe it was because I kept trying to quit listening to this book. I tried to quit twice within about half an hour the other day. But I always went back because I just had to know what happened.




This is a memoir by Victor Herman, an American man who went, with his family, to the Soviet Union in 1931. His father helped to run a Ford auto plant in Nizhny Novgorod. And, well, bad things started to happen. Any one of them probably should have killed Victor, but he was pretty much indestructible, so he survived assault after assault.

Victor's relationship to his wife, his daughters, his father, and his mother are beautiful aspects of the book.