What books by Russian authors did you read in 2011 and...

What are you looking forward to reading in 2012?

I only read two this year:

The Time: Night by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (1992, T 1994)
A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova (novel, Russian, 1848, T 1978)

Both were very interesting, and I look forward to exploring more writing by women, but the world is very large, so it will be as the books appear, I think:-)

I read three:

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky - one of my favorites of the year
Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin - considerable variety in length and content, but generally reminiscent of Chekhov's stories
The Sportsman's Notebook by Ivan Turgenev - Somewhat nostalgic stories of Russian country life and society

No specific plans for 2012 as my focus will likely be more to the east in China and Japan, but I'd like to read more by Viktor Pelevin.

I decided to switch-off and have every other book I read be Russian... so I read (some rereads) quite a few in 2011. As for 2012... it depends on what I find next because I'm almost out of books I own.

The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin by Vladimir Voinovich
The Kiss and Other Tales, Ward No. 6 and other Tales, Essential Plays by Anton Chekhov reread
The Insulted and Injured by Fyodor Dostoevsky
History of Soviet Literature 1917-1962 by Vera Alexandrova
Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov
Petersburg by Andrei Bely reread
Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya reread
The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky reread
Lolita by Nabokov
Mary by Nabokov
Envy by Yuri Olesha
The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov reread
A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikhail Bulgakov
Russian Short Stories From Pushkin to Buida by Various reread
Russian Stories edited by Gleb Struve reread
Netochka Nezvanova by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Road by Vasily Grossman
Russian Beauty by Victor Erofeyev
Quietly Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia
Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel by Boris Akunin
Shadow Chaser by Alexey Pehov
The Don Flows Home to the Sea by Mikhail Sholokhov
Russian Stories edited by Solomon Gromyko reread
I Want to Live by Vasily Shukshin
The Tragic Menagerie by Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal reread
Mother by Maxim Gorky
Phrygian Cornflowers by G. Semyonov
Safe Conduct by Boris Pasternak
Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman

I'm currently reading August 1914 by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Let's see; I read

Twelve Chairs, by Ilf and Petrov, which was generally grand, and didn't go irritatingly over the top, as I expected it to.

Nabokov's Transparent Things was wonderful in terms of the particular mood that author can set, but wasn't on the top of my list, where his works in general are concerned.

Moscow 2042 (Voinovich) was pretty clever and enjoyable; the stories in Andreyev's The Seven That Were Hanged were just generally fantastic in their clarity.

I've just started on a collection of Daniil Kharms's stuff, Today I Wrote Nothing.

I read four:

The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov
Lolita by Nabokov
Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine
Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov

My favourite Russian literature reading experience in 2011 though was Molotov's Lantern by Rachel Polonsky

I have a long list of Russian TBR titles to look forward to in 2012.

I read several in 2011

Glas 42: Sea Stories and Army Stories (collection)
Transparent Things - Nabokov
Glas 8: Love Russian Style (collection)
The Enchanted Wanderer - Leskov
The Dragon - Zamyatin
Pages from Tarusa (collection)
Kontinent - Maximov (ed)
Lolita - Nabokov
A Russian Gentleman - Aksakov
A Russian schoolboy - Aksakov
The history of Russian Literature - Otto
Verotchka's Tales - Siberiak
Reminiscences of leo Tolstoi - Gorky
Sava: The Life of a Man - Andreyev
We - Zamyatin
Poems from Russia (collection)
The Seven who were Hanged - Andreyev
The Brute and other farces - Chekhov
From Karamzin to Bunin; an anthology of Russian short stories (collection)
Russian Folk Tales (subset of Afanasev)

^jsoos can I just say that I am incredibly jealous of your list? Is that weird?

I collect Russian literature and try to read some every 3 or 4 books during the year

I've only been collecting and reading for the past several years and only in the last year or so have I read enough of my collection to look out for authors that aren't easy to find in new or used bookstores. So whenever I see a list with books by authors I can't find I'm always jealous.

I read four books by Russian authors last year.

Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin
Soul and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov
Conquered City by Victor Serge
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

I also read Gulag by Anne Applebaum which included quotes from many Russian authors incarcerated in the Gulag.

I plan to read Oblomov.

> 11 : I loved reading Oblomov, but I was also glad when I finished it. It is hilarious in a very, very slow and almost annoying way. Quite an experience, I hope you enjoy it!

I've had that on the TBR for a few years now . . .

Going to read it after i finish portrait of the artist, i've read a few chapters leisurely. Today though, i was getting myself mixed up in the old "which translation is the best" bussiness. There was a new translation from yale recently and another by steven somebody or other few a couple years before that. Pearle perhaps? My library system has a copy, the one i was looking at, a nice everymans edition. But ive liked both ann dunnigan and david margarask (sp.?) in the past. So, i could probably hunt a 3 dollar copy down from the internet of either one of their translations. My apologies for spelling and punctuation, i am typing this on a 7 inch tablet.

Oblomov took me two tries to get through. I found the beginning slow, but towards the middle to end I loved it.

There are a couple of new translations of Oblomov out there - one translated by Stephen Pearl and the other by Miriam Schwartz. The Magarshack seems to be the best known, although there are earlier translations by Natalie Duddington and Anne Dunnington (I may have transposed the first names because the similarity of their surnames confuses me!). I'm about to read Oblomov in several translations. Wish me luck!

In 2011, I read:

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
An Awkward Age by Anna Starobinets

I also plowed my way through some ancient 60s Graded Russian Readers

So far, in 2012, I've read:

Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin
Day Without Lying (Glossed Reader) and (an abridged Russian version of) Зануда, both stories by Viktoria Tokareva

Later this year, I hope to try some of the following titles:

The Talisman and Other Stories by Viktoria Tokareva (she's really great, I recommend her to everyone)
The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Sleepwalker in Fog by Tatyana Tolstaya
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Ha! We'll see.)

I agree with your comment about Viktoria Tokareva!

Anyone familiar with Fyodor Sologub's Petty (or Little) Demon?

I read it as part of a Russian culture course in 1994. I loved it at the time, although to be honest I don't remember it all that well now.

Very good. I'm looking for something at the moment. I gave Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men 100 pages; it's great, but there's not much to latch onto in terms of story--so far anyway. And it's not possible to dip your toe in, it seems, without general knowledge of Irish Mythology. Every now and then, there's this:

Now Miach, son of Diancecht, was a better hand at healing than his father, and had done many things. He met a young man, having but one eye, at Teamhair one time, and the young man said: "If you are a good physician you will put an eye in the place of the eye I lost." "I could put the eye of that cat in your lap in its place," said Miach. "I would like that well," said the young man. So Miach put the cat's eye in his head; but he would as soon have been without it after, for when he wanted to sleep and take his rest, it is then the eye would start at the squeaking of the mice, or the flight of the birds, or the movement of the rushes; and when he was wanting to watch an army or a gathering, it is then it was sure to be in a deep sleep.

But I can't keep track of everyone...websites aplenty, if you google a name or place however.

I highly recommend Happiness is Possible by Oleg Zaionchkovsky. It has just come out in an English translation by Andrew Bromfield. It's a novel about Moscow, in a way. Very funny, unexpected, tender, and, unbelievably for a Russian novel, it has a happy ending.

This is the first book translated from Russian from new publisher And Other Stories. AOS have been very particular about their books - they're brilliant literature yet highly readable, in a sense reaching out to two reading publics at once.

I thought I'd revive this thread and list the Russian books I've read this year:

Tolstoy: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, The Sebastopol Sketches, Two Hussars, A Russian Proprietor
Pasternak: Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers
Herzen: From the Other Shore
Aksakov, The family chronicle, A Russian schoolboy
Turgenev, Rudin

I also read a number of stories by Aleksey Pisemsky, a wonderful writer who should be better known (and more translated).

I'm in the middle of Dmitri Bykov's biography Boris Pasternak but have taken a break and probably won't finish it until well into next year.

Glad to see this revived!

I've recently read The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia and a Tolstoy collection including The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Diary of a Madman.

I have also acquired Sorokin's The Ice Trilogy and hope to read it before the end of the year.

Do report back on the Sorokin -- I've liked what little of his I've read, but am a bit daunted by the trilogy!

Yes please report back on The Ice Trilogy I read it a couple of years ago and I have mixed feelings about it.

Most of the Russian books I read this year are on the Strugatsky thread (except the actual Strugatsky novels I read *shrug). I read a lot of non-fiction books about Russia this year but only 3 by actual Russians, and two of those were by Teffi. I'm hoping to read The Big Green Tent by Christmas but idk about that.

>22 anisoara: Saw the recommendation of Happiness is Possible about a week ago and bought the book based off of reviews for a Christmas present and just finished it (then wrapped it and put it under the tree, I can't be the only one to do this). That was excellent. It loses steam towards the end but barely