chasing bawa

rolls by again. However, this week I’m sharing a book review from chasing bawa. Cross-blogging, hurray! So do check me out at Umamimart: Slightly Peckish just in case you missed my review here. It features Japan and food! Win-win, right?

In bookish news, I’ve got some exciting reading coming up this summer. I always get so excited about summer not just because we finally get to enjoy some sunshine but because of the endless possibilities. It must be a remnant of the school holidays, 3-4 months of nothing which I filled with reading, travelling, playing and creating things.

I’m currently having a love affair with Russian literature and am reading A Gentle Axe by R.N. Morris, a mystery sequel to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment featuring detective Porfiry Petrovich. I tried this novel several years ago just after I finished Crime and Punishment but didn’t get very far. Probably because I must have been Dostoevskied out even though I loved the original book. But this time round I’m enjoying it. See, it pays to give second chances, right? And it’s in preparation for Tolstoy’s War And Peace which I’m really looking forward to reading especially after finishing Elif Batuman’s brilliant The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them.

When we were discussing this over brunch on Sunday, especially regarding the complexity and sometimes impossibility of reading Russian literature (the names do me in, especially in The The Brothers Karamazov ), one of my friends asked whether I had read Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. Apparently after 50 pages, the main character still hasn’t got out of bed.

So, tell me, what is your favourite Russian/Soviet novel? And have you read Oblomov?