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Russian through literature | ||
Tags: Literature | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6706 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 145 of 148 07 October 2009 at 9:08am | IP Logged |
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I did find those short stories that were mentioned in my history book and I read one of them, Бездна. I was a bit surprised by it and quite amused when I had read the whole thing. It starts out as a perfect romantic story and then turns into a gruesome rape thing. Eight or so pages (I paste text into Word in order to read them and be able to look up words and add commentaries with translations with a minimum amount of clicking and writing, but it didn't work very well for this text since the Word dictionary didn't have almost any of the words in it...) of the text were actually commentaries from the time when it was published, the justifying letter from the "main character" telling people what really happened and so on... I think I will actually read the second short story as well since it was also mentioned in these commentaries.
My language exchange partner sent me a link to another short story that she really likes, Чужие сны, a quite poetic and "misty" story about St. Petersburg. I read it but it was incredibly difficult. I thought I had a respectable Russian vocabulary (at least passive...) but this text really put it to shame. It took ages to read and I must read it a couple of more times to really get the flow of it. Not to mention I'm going to add some new words to Anki... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6706 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 146 of 148 18 October 2009 at 11:33pm | IP Logged |
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I did continue reading the second short story I mentioned in my last post, but for some reason I stopped, I'm not sure why, maybe just because Microsoft Word broke down on me... I just remembered about it now that I saw that post. I will finish reading it another day. My book of short stories (Одна) mysteriously disappeared so I haven't been able to read anything more in it. I did try my luck with another short story mentioned in one of my books, entitled "Life with an Idiot", but it was strangely difficult and ended up in some pile of papers...
This doesn't mean I haven't done anything at all however! Today I started listening to a new audio book. I was really discouraged by Taras Bulba, which I didn't manage to follow at all, so I kind of quit listening to audio books. Today I happened to come across a book by Boris Akunin, an author I previously read in Swedish and hated for his lack of literary skill, and decided to give it a try. It's going a bit better than with Taras Bulba, but it's not great. I think I am expecting too much; I unconsciously think I will understand more than I do probably because I expect to have improved since I last listened to something. I listened to approximately 40 minutes today but got a bit lost at the end, so we'll see how that goes. I also started reading a new book. After seeing a program about life in Edwardian England on Discovery channel something I felt a strong urge to read something classical, preferably something Brontë, just because it's always so gloomy and oppressing. I don't have the time for that though so I picked up "Отцы и Дети" instead. I have so far read until page 26 (it's slow because I look up too many words) and I really like it. It is exactly what I was looking for. Full, complete sentences, an abundance of adjectives and stiff social conventions. On top of that it is highly relevant for my class and my professor keeps mentioning the book all the time, and I just happened to buy it in Samara (probably for less than what a deciliter of milk costs here) in a very simple edition from 1972. The pages are more yellow than old people's teeth! Perfect for that old feeling... I did actually do some other reading, not in Russian but related to Russian. The book was actually written in French to begin with, but it's by a Russian author and it deals with Russia and France and the difficulty of living between two languages. It's "Dreams of My Russian Summers" by Andrei Makine. I have just got a couple of pages left and I will finish it tonight or tomorrow. I didn't really like it at first but it grew on me and it *is* a very skillfully written. And relevant, for me. Edited by tricoteuse on 18 October 2009 at 11:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6706 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 147 of 148 22 October 2009 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
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I have read until page 55 in the book (Отцы и Дети) and I am still liking it very much. I don't care that very much for Bazarov's nihilist views though. I think I need to read up a bit on Turgenev. I don't know where he stands, except for him being part of the Western camp in the Russian intellectual debate.
On Tuesday, when I met with my Russian language exchange partner, I brought a long list of words and expressions I had noted down from the book and we went through it, noting what words were totally useless today and so on. I also got quite a couple of new expressions that were derived from older words, but I haven't added anything from the list to Anki yet. It was very interesting! Due to lack of time I have kind of stopped looking up words though; I read the book on my eight minute Metro rides to and from the University, while waiting for the Metro and as often as I can, before going to bed. A couple of pages here and there do add up to quite a lot in the end. On Wednesday we watched "Кавказская пленница" at our "Russian cinema". I liked it a lot, mostly for its silliness. Edited by tricoteuse on 22 October 2009 at 10:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6706 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 148 of 148 01 November 2009 at 6:51pm | IP Logged |
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I kind of forgot to mention in this log as well that both of my logs have moved. They can now be found here.
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