The Russian Reading Challenge 2008 blog encourages visitors to read four Russian-related books between January 1 and December 31, 2008. The best part about the challenge format is that nobody will be alone -- dozens of participants should mean lots of discussion.
I'm going to use the Challenge as a way to assuage my guilt about missing these classics for too long:
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Бесы (The Possessed)
Nikolai Gogol’s Ревизор (Inspector General) plus stories I haven’t read in Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки (Village Evenings near Dikanka -- not the video game!) and Миргород (Mirgorod)
Vasilii Grossman’s Жизнь и судьба (Life and Fate)
Andrei Platonov’s Котлован (Foundation Pit) or, as a backup, Ювенильное море (Juvenile Sea)
For now I'm reading and enjoying Sergei Dovlatov's Компромисс (The Compromise), a very funny-but-sad autobiographical novel about working as a journalist in Soviet Estonia. A friend lent me four volumes of Dovlatov -- t0 be sure I'd find something I liked! -- and I may be reading it all cover-to-cover if everything is this good.
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