A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Readable, diverting book about reconciling oneself to changed circumstances, and to keeping your chin up in the face of adversity. Unfortunately it is also Russian literature-lite, a kind of Oprah's Book Club version of the real thing: the author apes the style of a real Russian novel, and his characters' comportment and dialogue ape what you'd find in real Russian literature.

Maybe this might lead a few curious readers to actual Russian literature (see the Russian Lit Starter Pack at the end of this post). If so, then it's good that this novel exists.

The story revolves around Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat deemed a "Former Person" by the Bolshevik regime and sentenced, implausibly, to lifetime house arrest in Moscow's famous Metropol Hotel. In the decades to follow Rostov lives out his life in this hotel as a sort of reverse Forrest Gump: all the world's interesting people come to him.

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Rostov is a good example of a Mary Sue character: perfect in nearly every way, always ready with the consummate bon mot, an unerring observer of human nature, and an expert in whatever arbitrary skill the storyline requires: classical music, literature, orology, gourmanderie, oenology, marksmanship--even pilferage (in one particularly far-fetched plot event late in the book).

For a reader to swallow this novel's fundamental premise (that Rostov, rather than being summarily executed, would be put under house arrest in one of the world's finest hotels where he could somehow, for free, still eat in the hotel's restaurants, drink at the bar, wander the halls, seduce actresses, and, eventually, help teach European and American culture to powerful Bolshevik apparatchiks) requires either complete ignorance of Soviet-era history or a gravity-defying suspension of disbelief. Get past that and the story will carry you along harmlessly.

Russian Literature Starter Pack:

Anton Chekhov short stories

Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons; Torrents of Spring

Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls; see also his short story "The Overcoat"

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

Perpetuity by Kevin Joseph [new fiction release]

A fast-moving, speculative sci-fi thriller, and a fun read! After helping a fellow runner who cut her foot on a nail, a young doctor inadvertently discovers a dangerous secret in her blood, a secret that puts them in direct conflict with shadowy forces in the biotech industry. Suddenly, they find themselves running for their lives, threatened by the US government... and even more powerful enemies. Perpetuity uses several character perspectives, and the reader gradually pieces together the book's reality through various characters' eyes. I appreciate any novel that is well-structured to the point that the reader doesn't actually "see" the structure, but can just enjoy the story as it unfolds. It's harder to do than it looks. The author has a tight, noirish writing style and a knack for capturing archetypal characters. Two examples: you'll meet a smarmy, arriviste tech CEO rendered perfectly, right down to the condescending internal monologue running in hi...

The Wars of America (Vol 1) by Robert Leckie

This is a massive and capably-written history, the first of two volumes. It will fill in a lot of the cracks in any reader's historical knowledge of the USA--especially if you're like me, someone whose historical knowledge has more cracks than foundation. Recommended as either a starting point to learn about each conflict, or as a finishing point to groove and firm up what you already know. Before I get to the book itself, let me share a brief thought on the absolute necessity of reading history--but specifically, reading history from historians who lived outside your own time period. Current history writing is subject to a variety of problems, starting with the historians themselves, who are necessarily products of the time in which they live. They hold their era's consensus narratives, and they'll have no choice but to filter their views through modernity. The modern publishing industry adds yet another layer of problems: it acts as a gatekeeping institution, both di...

The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner

This short and humble book will be priceless to an open-minded reader. It discusses how to cultivate present-moment awareness, how to focus on process rather than product, how to make haste slowly, and many other practices that are increasingly indispensable in our haste-filled, results-oriented modern era. Several years ago I heard an unforgettable story from the owner of a language school in Santiago, Chile. She told me about a disgruntled customer who had been taking Spanish classes for weeks, but wasn't getting any better. This student complained, loudly, "I paid my money. Where is my Spanish?" This story stuck with me for well over a decade because it's a metaphor for how people confuse buying something with learning something, confuse "taking a class" with actually learning a domain and developing a sincere practice of that domain. We've productized so much of life in the modern era that people think they can buy language fluency off the shelf, li...

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