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

The Stress of Life by Hans Selye

Gives a very useful set of lenses for how to think about stress in all its forms and manifestations. The bulk of the book deals with stress in medical biology and human physiology, but there are applications beyond our bodies, to our lives, communities, even among civilizations. A very interesting work. The chapter "When Scientists Disagree" by itself makes this entire book worth reading. It is an eloquent articulation of the nature of scientific debate (including the implications of when scientific debate turns insulting and hostile), and the author quite humbly provides the reader *all* of the professional disagreements and contentions with his model of stress. This part of the book really sings out with humility, sincerity and a scientific rigor we seems to have lost in the postmodern era. Notes: * General adaptation syndrome (G.A.S.): how we adapt to stressors: various shock therapies across history (fever treatments, electric shock, etc) provided improvement with n...

Mary's World by Richard N. Côté [Fourth Turning-style history of the Pringle family of Charleston, SC]

This is a history of a wealthy, well-connected South Carolina plantation family before, during and after experiencing an asteroid-grade event: the Civil War and the North's ensuing multi-year military and economic occupation of the South. The family quickly lost everything, became impoverished to the point of barely having enough to eat, and eventually scattered all over the country and world. They were once one of the richest and most important rice growing families in the entire United States; now no one knows who they are. Still more sad and sobering is how this experience changed the earnest, sincere, well-bred Christian matriarch of this family into an embittered and angry old woman--bickering with her husband, desperate for money, and starting little marmalade-making businesses in her 70s to try to make ends meet. [A quick affiliate link to readers to the book here . You can support my work here by buying all your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, o...

The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain by John H. Gleason

In-depth (and surprisingly interesting!) analysis of the shifting public and government opinion on Russia during late 18th and early/mid 19th century England, plus a useful (and telling) exploration of the various propaganda and media narratives used to drive these opinions. I've written before on this site, many times, that history rhymes, it doesn't repeat exactly, so you have to know your history--and by this I mean know your actual history, not your country's preferred propaganda narrative of history--in order to see that rhyme to make useful, accurate predictions. It is fascinating to see England in the 1800s applying various forms of the same propagandized and manufactured Russophobia that we see in the United States today. England went from a literal alliance with Russia (against Napoleonic France) to a state of paranoid loathing of Russia in a matter of decades; the USA likewise went from " aren't they our friends now? " after the Soviet collapse to...

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