Books, books, books

 So much reading has been going on!

First off, some nice hard sci-fi. Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space. Outstanding space opera, with solid science behind it. Unlike another recent read which just was plain horrible. Don't even want to mention its name, but yuck.

Next up was dumb luck. One night at dinner I saw the British colonel here eating alone, so I joined him. Talk at one point finally led to our reading interests I mentioned my love for Evelyn Waugh. Turns out he wrote his dissertation on Waugh. Then we talked for about a half hour, comparing books. During this discussion, he mentioned Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins. So of course I had to read it. Oh. My. God. Best book in about a year. Best since The Memory Police. I cannot stop thinking of this book and it's been about a month already. So glad I sat with him that night!

Next up was a book I started at least twice over the years. I got it on Audible and finally finished it. All the crows around here, I felt I had to know more about corvids, in this case, ravens: Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven. Great book, this guy really knows his stuff. These birds are so interesting, I can't wait till we move again as I'm going to set up a feeding station for ravens and crows and see if I can get them to bring me gifts. 

Finally, the family book club choice most recently was John Scalzi's Redshirts. So funny. Clever. Definitely read the codas at the end. No, it's not about Star Trek. 

OMG, how did I not publish this one. I wrote the above on 25 Feb, and just now looking here and realized I never published it. 

So many more books have been read! But I'll save that post for another time. 

Russian results

 So how about this? 3/3 on the Russian reading and listening DLPT. (Only took 34 years.) And, a 2+ again on the OPI. 

And no, I'm not going to sit for the upper level DLPT, thank you very much!

Russian

 This year's testing is complete, and I've got great news. For the first time since I started taking DLPTs 30+ years ago, I finally got a 3/3 in Russian. 

For the uninitiated among my dear reader(s), that's a great score. That's the max you can score on the lower range DLPT. Yes, I can sit for the upper range test, but holy hell, I think I barely made the 3/3 this time. Not sure I wanna try for a 3+. Honestly don't think I am a 3+.

So, listening and reading tests done for a year. I did the OPI on Tuesday, but of course those take a bit of time before the results come through. Last time I got a 2+, which was miraculous. This time I think I'm a solid 2 but possibly a 2+. She was pushing me with multiple topics, and that's normally a sign they're trying to get you to the next level. My God, I hope she wasn't trying to get me to a 2! 

I guess all the studying and the one-on-one with Marina worked. I'll hold off on the celebration till I get the OPI score back. Пожелай мне удачи, дорогой читатель!

A Distant Mirror, and more

 I finished Barbara Tuchman's classic A Distant Mirror a few days ago. Great book, especially if you are interested in the so called Dark Ages. I applaud her on telling the history through one normal joe,de Coucy. Lots of pages on the Black Death and supposed chivalric valor. Good read. 

I dumped the Russian HP4. Not enough time left before my DLPT and OPI, and I need to concentrate on Russian that I'll be tested on, therefore, lots of news articles. The big ones now are on changes Biden is proposing with respect to Russian-US relations; changes proposed to the Russian retirement system (дедушкам и бабушкам надо дольше работать!); and some other subjects I can't remember right now. One more class left this coming Friday night, then the speaking test on Tuesday, listening on Thursday and reading on Saturday.

Then I'll start an Esperanto book that my daughter sent me: Bogomolov's La Momento de Vero. Another in my favorite sub-genre of books by Esperantists about WWII. 

I'm a bit behind in my 2021 reading challenge, but I don't get as much reading time here as I do at home, so I expect to catch up once I've returned to the family.

Russian

 Doing another Russian class with a Defense Language Institute (DLI) instructor like I did last March/April time-frame. I tried to get six weeks, twice weekly for two hours, but all they had available was six classes of two hours each. Gonna take what I can get.

I think I've been trained to be anxious before these classes due to the year of the Russian Basic Course at DLI way back in 1986. The teachers then, oh boy, God help you if you didn't do all your homework. I had one break into English once and tell me she was going to "fucking smack" me if I kept pronouncing в комнате as /və kom-na-tə/.

So now I don't sleep well the night prior, for fear of disappointing my instructor, who couldn't be nicer of course. I study and read, and study and listen, till I'm tired of the language, then have a great time during the two-hour block. Ugh.

Besides the things I'm doing for class, I'm also listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in Russian while reading in Russian (one chapter) and English (the next chapter). So far so good, but I know I won't have enough time before my DLPT and OPI to finish the book; too slow going as I get back to my room so late every night.

Now, I'll finish this short post and get back to reading. Harry & Co. are about to go to the Quidditch World Cup. Nothing bad could happen there, right?

New year

 New year, new goal? Maybe. Who knows.

Goal again this year is 70 books. Secretly hoping for 80, but we'll see when I get back home. Currently I'm reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (HP4). I'm reading it in prep to L-R it in Russian. I'm starting a Russian class this Friday night. Two hours, six times in January. Then my tests in the beginning of February. Hoping to maintain my 2+/2+ and at least a 2 in speaking. 

I'm also "reading" (by Audible) Tuchman's A Distant Mirror about the 14th c., one of my favorite historical time periods. It's very long (29+ hours) but engrossing, as she traces history through the life of one "normal" man (thus, not royalty or a woman, as she explains if there is enough written about a woman in the Middle Ages then she was extraordinary, and not "normal"). Review later (16 hours left).

Coptic continues this week after a two-week holiday break. We're in chapter 8 still, two sets of exercises left then on to ch 9 where we work on prepositions with pronouns attached. Very interesting language, this. If this gets in the way of the Russian I'll audit till my tests are done.

After the Russian, I'm reading a new Esperanto book I got called La Momento de Vero (The moment of truth) by V. Bogomolov. It's a military detective story about the search for German spies in Belarus during WWII. Right up my alley!

I did end last year with 71 books, not just the 70 I reported in my last post. The family book club read was Rosone's Into the Stars, a really horrible and horribly edited sci-fi novel. (FTL or FLT, depending upon the chapter you're reading.) Thank God it was short. Thankfully, it cost zero dollars. Would have hated myself if I'd paid any money for it. 

2020 Reading Challenge complete!

 Just finished The Monks of War, and thus have finished both my 2020 Reading Challenge (70 books) and my Dewey Decimal Challenge.

I had originally set 80 for my reading goal, I believe, and was on tap to exceed that, what with COVID shutting down most other fun things. But I'm working a lot now so my reading slowed down. I put away 23,461 pages, the longest, no surprise, being W&P. The shortest was the Diaries of Adam and Eve at 72 pages. (W&P at 1298.) 

For the Dewey Decimal Challenge, where I wanted to read one book in each "century" (000-099, 100-199, etc), I read at least one in each, but for a few, I read more than one book: 300s (The Medieval Machine and The Pursuit of Power); 400s (International Planned Languages, Serendipities, and How to Learn Any Language); 600s (Leaving Earth, You are Your Own Gym, and Strong Advice); 700s (The Naked Nude, The Nude, and Long Distance Swimming); 800s (The Fatal Eggs and Sexual Personae); and 11 books in the 900s (not gonna list them all, but tops of this almost-dozen had to be Story of a Secret State). 

I read five books not in English. Three in Esperanto, one in Russian and one in Croatian. Not too shabby.

A couple reads, and nostalgia

 Since finishing War and Peace (thank the sweet Lord) I've had fun reading other stuff. First stop was back to one of my favorite characters: Arkady Renko. Damn that Martin Cruz Smith sure has pegged the Russian soul (русский дух). If I didn't know the author's name or background, I would have believed the book was translated from the Russian. 

This time I read Red Square. Renko is back in the (semi-)good graces of the prosecutor's office after his time afloat. As usual his investigating nose is getting him into trouble with 'the man.' Another great story, and set at a time that I lived through in one of the settings of this novel: 1991 in Berlin.

My father came to visit me and my wife in Berlin in summer 1991. We took him to Brandenburg Gate where I was stunned to see, over the former killing fields between East and West Berlin, a crane from which for a mere 100 deutsche marks one could bungee jump. It was surreal. 

That exact scene that my father, my wife and I all experienced took place in this novel. One paragraph for what to me has been decades of memory. It simply blew me away. 

(c) Martin Cruz Smith

Then came the coup against Gorbachev. Both in real life and in this novel. So close to home. What a great read. 

After Renko I read the hilarious and quite quick Twain novella The Diaries of Adam and Eve. Holy crap it was so funny. This can't be the first ever 'he said, she said' in literature, is it? Maybe not, but it might possibly be the best. I had such a good time with it. Despite the terribly sad ending. 

I'm still reading The Monks of War by Seward and just started Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John. When I finish those two I will have officially completed my 2020 reading challenge (70 books) on Goodreads. But I'll probably get a few more books in before 00:01, 1 Jan. 

War and Peace and War, and more War, and Napoleon

 I've never wanted to finish a book more in my life. Oh dear God, this thing never ended. Took me forever. About as long as the frigging Napoleonic War lasted. Or so it seemed. 

War and Peace is, well, mandatory if you claim to know something of Russia. Or Russian culture. You really must read it. Just as you should read Crime and Punishment (excellent) or The Master and Margarita (incredible). 

But oh lordy, it just kept going. 

I decided to read it at the start of the are-you-essential-or-non-essential time, March-ish. I'd just heard about a bunch of book geeks who were going to read W&P over the year 2020. There's 361 chapters, so a chapter a day with some flex, and boom, you're done in a year. 

I figured: I'm going to be deployed for six months. Why not do two chapters a day for the deployment? Boom, book read. 

Don't get me wrong. It really was good. I was way ahead of the 2-a-day sked within a couple days. No reason to put the book down if I was enjoying it. At any point I was anywhere from one week to one month ahead. 

But after a few months it dragged. I just wanted to read something else. I read other books during this time, and that's when I would lag on W&P, then have to catch up. But I like variety and too much Napoleon after a while. 

I went balls to the wall the last couple of weeks. And got 'er done. And I'm glad. I even threw in some chapters in Russian toward the end. Since I knew how the story was going and where it was going, I was able to get a lot through context if I didn't know. So count some language practice in there too.

But now I'm free! I'm reading my last of the Dewey Decimal Challenge now (The Monks of War by Seward) and will start a fiction book probably tonight or tomorrow. Can. Not. Wait!

Pomp and Circumstance by Noël Coward

 This book was reviewed on the wonderful blog Stuck in a Book. Pomp and Circumstance is the sole novel by playwright Noel Coward. [Spoilers follow.]

The setting is a fictional south seas British colony (Samola) and an upcoming visit of the Queen and her consort. The British residents of the island first try and keep the visit a secret, unsuccessfully. Then they try and plan an extravaganza worthy of the visit. 

In the midst of the planning, a duchess arrives who intends on having a bit of fun with local playboy Bunny. Of course, things don't end up as planned, and we the readers get to enjoy comedy.

I'd never read any of Coward's plays, but my wife has had a biography of his on the shelves for a few years and the cover has intrigued me. I might try one of his plays, if they're anything approaching as funny as this novel.

For lovers of Greene, Sharpe, Amis, this story is a fun read. And for anyone out there who has had to plan for Distinguished Visitors, you'll certainly find much that is familiar in this book. 

A Good Man in Africa

 Can't quite remember what brought me to William Boyd's book. Maybe a WSJ review? I was reading something about him somewhere and thought immediately of Graham Greene and Tom Sharpe. Decided on A Good Man in Africa after a quick read over the book's description. 

Hilarious. I will read more from Boyd. There's one particular scene here that reminded me of my ROTFL while reading Sharpe's Wilt. This book is a bit of Wilt mixed with Greene's The Honorary Consul. Wonderful. 

In other news, W&P continues. I think I'm just over 60% done, and that's page 780 or so. Never ending...