There are quite a few books jostling for my attention for this Daily Devotional Reading program I've concocted. I am hoping to get around to all of them eventually, of course, but for now...I am going to throw my money down on Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad...and I anticipate following that up with his Life and Fate (which is, after all, the sequel). It's been on my "been meaning to" list for a very long time...and after finishing Leviathan, I just don't have the strength for another Old Time Classic. Stalingrad is a novel, and I have been reserving my DDR time for non-fiction, but Grossman spent so much time researching this thing that it might as well be non-fiction. In fact, I just read an interview with a moderately well-respected historian who said just that. So yes, it's going to be Stalingrad. 17 pages worth of introduction and 965 pages of novel--which includes notes and stuff, but hey, if I'm going to read all of that shit, I want credit for it. Ahem. So 982 pages. If I stick to 10 pages a day, that means I've got 98 days of reading ahead of me. I would immediately go to the calendar and see what day that puts me at (I like concrete goals), but I want to get a sense of the reading first. I suspect that ten pages a day might not be enough for me on this one.
Okay? Okay.
Day One (DDRD 1,064): September 30, 2020
BTW: As I write this, I've finished the novel...but mum's the word here with respect to spoilers. Just wanted to call to your attention that after the novel there's an "Afterword" which includes 20 pages of notes on variations between the four main type scripts and three published editions of the novel. It's separated by chapters. I wish I had known this existed before I started reading, as the best way to use this resource is to read the variation notes for each chapter after you finish reading it...while the events are fresh in your mind. Unfortunately, there's nothing to indicate that to you as you commence reading. Which is why I am here. And, of course, why they pay me the Big Bucks.
Okay? Okay.
Oh, wait a minute. Still in the "after" time frame here. In fact, as I write this, I'm about 1/4th of the way through Life and Fate, the sequel / second part of Stalingrad. I would suggest that you watch Soviet Storm: World War II in the East (2010), Season 1, Episode 4 before you commence reading Stalingrad. It's a low budget production, but don't let that distract you--it gives a superb overview of the battle which will help you see the big picture as you read the novel.
Okay. For real this time.
Started in on the introduction today, not sure if I could handle the whole 17 pages or not, as Introductions are often not much fun at all. And on page x...a mere 1 1/2 pages in...there was a typo: "...Grossman tell us that...." And that didn't inspire any confidence in me. But then the gears started clicking in place and I got really interested in the story behind the story, and before I knew it I was finished with said Introduction and looking forward to starting in on the novel proper.
I can already see that the names are going to be a problem for me, and I suspect that this is going to be one of those cast of thousands novels, so I think I am going to start a cheat sheet. Nothing elaborate, just names and maybe a bit of description if there is any, and any significant acts. I have a hard time keeping characters straight even under the least trying circumstances, so I think that doing this will help me to squeeze more drops of enjoyment out of the reading. Speaking of which, I am so anxious to start reading that I might not even wait until tomorrow.
Day Two (DDRD 1,065): October 1, 2020
I ended up waiting...but not for lack of desire to start the novel. At any rate, I started today, and read the first ten pages. Didn't have to worry about starting a character list, because the only prominent characters so far are Hitler and Mussolini, and I think I can keep them straight. It was pretty much straight up history, actually--there were even footnotes. But Mr. Grossman has the storyteller's deft touch, and he invests this history with verve. One of the last lines I read today was this: "Hitler was unable to conceive that his fist could not smash through everything." Kind of reminds me of someone....
Also, Jet has decided that she approves of Stalingrad.
Day Three (DDRD 1,066): October 2, 2020
Read to page 21 this morning--which put me at the end of Chapter 4. Chapters 3 - 5 focus on Pyotr Semyonovich Vavilov, a poor peasant who has just received his call-up papers. Pyotr has three children: Alyosha, who has already been sent to the war; 16 year-old Nastya; and 4 year-old Vanya (aka Mister Samovar, because of his barrel chest, puffing while walking, and unbuttoned trousers revealing his "spigot"). Pyotr's wife Marya is mentioned, too, but I actually thought he was a widower for several pages because she seemed so absent from his life. (She wasn't at home during these chapters, which was part of it, but it was more than that, too.) Grossman usually refers to Pyotr by his last name, so I guess I should get used to that, but from past experience with Russian writers, I know that names can be tricky. Dostoyevsky would refer to Raskolnikov by his last name, his first name, his first and middle name, and his nickname.
Vavilov seems like a good fellow who has worked all of his life and received very few rewards for it. He's 45, still vigorous (he goes up onto his roof to mend it, knowing that it needs to be taken care of before he leaves to join the army), and his eyes mist up when Vanya asks him about going off to war, which gives you the impression that there is a vast reservoir of gentleness and love in him as well. I was thinking about casting this role...I used to have my students do this as a way of making characters stick in their minds more vividly...and Brad Pitt would have been my first choice, but he's a little too old (about ten years) for it, so I'm going to go for Jude Law. He's the right age, and I think he can combine the sensitivity (look at those eyes) with the sense of solidity (I'm thinking Black Sea here). So there we go. Starring Jude Law as Pyotr Semyonovich Vavilov.
I enjoyed these pages quite a bit, and am pretty anxious to read some more, so I don't know if I'll wait until tomorrow to continue. News as it happens.
P.S. Oh, wow. I went Googling to see if Jude Law had ever played a Russian peasant, and look what I found: "A feature-length film, Enemy at the Gates (2001), starring Jude Law as Zaytsev, was based on part of William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad (1973)...." Keep in mind that not only did I have no idea that Jude Law had ever played a Russian (much less in a film about the Battle of Stalingrad), but that when I looked around for an actor to "play" Vavilov, I started by Googling "45 year-old actors," and only chose Jude Law because he was the right age and because I thought his role in Black Sea showed that he could play roles which weren't wimpy. A very odd coincidence, I think.
Went back for more. But before I get to that, I must say that there is a scene at the beginning of Chapter 5 that I think would be a perfect opening for a movie. Vavilov is chopping wood by the light of the moon...trying to do everything he can for his wife and kids before he leaves, but pretty obviously also very frightened about heading off to war. It's a beautiful scene. If anyone has a hundred million dollars or so to front me, I would love to take care of putting this movie together. 🤙
Anyway...I read to page 35. And I'm beginning to suspect that I won't be able to keep myself down to ten pages a day on this project. Matter of fact, I am ready to go back for more right now, but I might not be able to get to it. Met another family starting with Chapter 6: Alexandra Vladimirovna Shaposhnikova is the mom, her daughters Zhenya, Marusya and Vera. There are other characters in there as well: Stepan Spiridonov is Marusya's husband, and then there is at least one grandkid and some friends. Funny, when Alexandra was first introduced I thought she was a rich widow, but shortly thereafter you find out that she is living in a three room apartment, and her whole family is now back to living with her. There's also talk about how if there's going to be a large dinner party that every guest brings some food or some ingredient, because it's so hard to feed a large group of people. I didn't feel the immediate pull of these characters they way that I did with Vavilov, but the night is young.
Day Four (DDRD 1,067): October 3, 2020
Read to page 51. Still at Alexandra's dinner party, and getting to know different characters a bit. At least one of the guests is a soldier heading out to the war who expects to be dead in five days.
I also looked up 
and found it on Amazon for free, so started watching it. Jude Law plays the lead, a character named Vasily Zaitsev. I've only gotten 30 minutes into it, but it looks pretty good, actually. Watching the early war scenes just makes you wonder how anyone survives that kind of situation, and of course the answer is that it's just luck. You were standing here instead of there. You moved to the left instead of to the right. Etcetera. It's a frightening thought, though, isn't it?
I also find my interest in the Stalingrad "trilogy" (it's actually four books) by David Glantz re-ignited. I'd previously started reading the first one and found it quite interesting, but it was a little overwhelming and I didn't stick with it. Also, the books are pricey...it would cost at least $100 to get all four of them, maybe more...so that option is out. The LFPL does have all four, though, so maybe...we'll see how it goes.
Very much enjoyed the 16 pages of Stalingrad that I read today, but I think I'm going to switch over to read some other stuff tonight. I'm about 60% of the way through A Soldier of Poloda: Further Adventures Beyond the Farthest Star (The Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs Series Volume 5) by Lee Strong, and I'd really like to polish that one off in the near future.
Oh, almost forgot--I really liked this line from today's reading:
"'Let's all agree not to say another word about the war today!' said Zhenya. 'Let's just talk about pies!''
I think that's good advice for us today, too. Let's just talk about pies.
Day Five (DDRD 1,068): October 4, 2020
Read to page 65. Still with the "dinner party" guests...more or less. The party ended and we are following different groups of them around at this point. I am starting to feel like I have a grip on a few of them now: Tolya, who is Alexandra's grandson, and who is on his way to the war, and Mostovskoy, who is an old man and a former professor. He is not in good health, but despite his age and ill health, he wishes that he could go to fight for his country...which is absurd and touching. As an old man in somewhat ill health myself, I understand the absurd longing to do things which I am incapable of doing.
Here's a line which his me pretty hard:
"Your thinking's like the teachings of Christ. All very beautiful – but nobody actually lives by them. They just soak the whole earth with blood."
It has its fair share of truth, for sure...but it is so devoid of hope that it's hard to embrace whole-heartedly.
It's early morning and I've already read 13 pages...and I have several other things I want to do some reading on and several other things I really should do today...but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to read at least a few more pages of Stalingrad.
News as it happens.
BTW, I didn't feel like getting up from my chair to walk the requisite six feet to retrieve my copy of this book when I was trying to remember the name "Mostovskoy," so I went Googling instead. And found a link to a Google Books sample. Could come in handy. So for future reference, it's HERE.
Day Six (DDRD 1,069): October 5, 2020
Read to page 90. Really starting to like the "dinner party" guests now as I get to know them a bit. I started wondering if I'd read this far before (when I checked the book out of the library...right after it was published, I think)...and then I read the truck breaking down story and after thinking, "Wasn't this in a movie?" for a minute I realized that no, I had read this previously. Interesting how the scene embedded itself in my brain so visually, though, isn't it? And then a little farther on I came across a quote which I remembered...the "two truths" thing. Yeah, that's good. So I have read this far before...but not much farther, I don't think. I have the impression that I had to stop around page 100 because the book was due and couldn't be renewed. Reading it now makes me wonder how I managed not to immediately buy it, though...it's so good, so captivating.
Along the way, Grossman mentioned another book which sounds very interesting: The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army and World War II Through Objects by Brandon M. Schechter. It's not available at LFPL and it's a bit pricey at $36, but there's a Kindle version for a mere $10, so that might happen. I downloaded a sample so I could see if I really need to go there. This is the way it always goes, though: I read a book and it sends me into two, three, a half-dozen, etc. other books. It's the fission of reading. I like it. I think this is how all education should work, actually.
Anyway...I also found the quote from a historian about Stalingrad that I vaguely referred to earlier on. The historian, Sir Anthony Beevor, was asked to recommend five books about World War II, and the first one he chose was...oh, wait, it was actually the sequel to Stalingrad, which is Life and Fate. Still, I think it speaks to the quality of Mr. Grossman's work in general. Sir Beevor saith:
"Life and Fate...I think is probably the most important work of fiction about World War II. But, in fact, it is more than just a fiction because it is based on very close reporting from his time with the soldiers."
Mmm-hmmm.
Also in today's reading, there's a bit where Alexandra visits her son-in-law's power station, and it was just a lovely description of the place.
"They entered a large brightly lit hall – and it once felt caught up, gently but inescapably spellbound, by the supercharged atmosphere of a large power station."
And it gets better from there. That paragraph kicked up some memory dust and made me remember how much I had wanted to read Bratsk Station by Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko... which I've been carrying in the back seat of my car for several months now. So I got that out and will see if I can take a look at it later on. Which also reminded me that there was a different version of this book...Bratsk Station: The City of Yes & The City of No and Other New Poems (The Sun Poetry Series)...which I might have to go ahead and buy now.
Fission.
Also, I realized that Vera is Alexandra's granddaughter, not her daughter as I'd said earlier on.
And also also, it's funny, because Alexandra's son in law is an important man, the manager of the power station, yet he is living with his mother-in-law...with his daughter, with his two sisters-in-law, and at least one other grandchild of Alexandra...in a three room apartment. Kind of sums up the U.S.S.R., doesn't it?
As always, I'm hoping to read a bit more of this book today, which just goes to show that 25 pages isn't enough. Good sign.
Speaking of Bratsk Station and Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko...I started reading on it...just a little nibble, and found a couple of things that I liked right off the bat. In the first poem ("Prayer Before the Poem" which serves as a kind of modern day version of the Invocation to the Muse), he makes reference to the fact that he is "hacking my way through time." And that really is it sometimes, isn't it? Some days are dense forests, and you just have to get out your machete and make it do what it gonna do. It also reminds me of Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, desperately waging war against boredom via a variety of strategies, most of them unsuccessful. But even failure in that context is useful, because it hacks down a few minutes, doesn't it? And it also reminds me of Stephen King's The Langoliers...the movie version, anyway. (Which was horrid, by the way, but hey, sometimes ugly cows give a decent cup's worth of milk.) I've never read the novella, and probably never will. Anyway...when Time slows down, or whatever it does, and, for instance, it is hard to get a match to light. That. What Gus is tryin' to say here is that...sometimes pushing through the minutes and hours is a hard job.
I also started reading the second poem, "A Journey through Russia," and found these lines, which I liked quite a bit:
"All my life I have been elbowing someone out of the way,
and it was I, myself."
Day Seven (DDRD 1,070): October 6, 2020
Read to page 122. Hmpf. 32 pages. Most of it in an early morning session, but I came back for more a couple of times. Noticed an interesting thing about the structure of the novel. With the dinner party group, Grossman will peel off one character...Colonel Novikov, who is desperately pursuing Alexandra's daughter, Zhenya...and follow his back story, then reconnect with the story emanating from the dinner party. It's an interesting way to approach it, and it is slowly deepening my appreciation for that rather large group of characters. Even Novikov, who seemed like a gigantic pain in the ass at first, is imbued with depth and becomes a sympathetic character.
Two lines struck me as memorable in today's pages:
"What we perceive then is true beauty, and it tells us only one thing: that life is a blessing."
That surprised me. Like most of the Russian writers I know, Grossman seemed like a kind of gloomy guy...not that there's anything wrong with that...but gloomy guys don't write lines like that. I suppose you could dismiss it as reflective of one character's disposition, but if you know anything about writers, you know that that's bullshit.
The second line that struck me occurred when a character...I think it was Novikov...was reflecting on a friend who had died, and he thought,
"...and now it's as if he'd never lived!"
That thought is pretty near to my state of mind as I face growing older and coming closer (by the minute) to death. I have to wonder if anything I've done means anything at all...because it will all be eradicated by my death.
Mmm.
I also finished watching the Enemy at the Gates movie, and you know what? That movie really kicked ass. Free on Amazon Prime if you want to take a gander.
Day Eight (DDRD 1,071): October 7, 2020
Read to page 142...and would like to read some more, but it's Vice-Presidential Debate time tonight, so I have some drinkin' to do. Today's 20 pages were focused on Colonel Novikov as he dives into the preliminary stages of the Battle of Stalingrad. Speaking of which, I happened upon this picture...
Day Nine (DDRD 1,072): October 8, 2020
Read to page 160 early on (around 6 am)...and will no doubt read some more later. We've now moved from Colonel Novikov to Alexandra's eldest daughter, Ludmila, and especially to her second husband, Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum.
I also did an early morning watch of 1942 Stalingrad—Hitler’s Ambitions Crushed (31 mins / 2014) on Kanopy. Nothing particularly new, but it was good background and included some video which I would suppose is of the actual battleground.
P.S. Read a bit more...to page 189. Getting to know Shtrum...getting to know all about him.
P.P.S. This just in:
(They're quarantining on the porch right now.)
P.P.P.S. Which reminds me...look what was in today's pages:
Speaking of which, I read some more. To p. 189.
Mmm-hmmm.
Day Ten (DDRD 1,073): October 9, 2020
Read to page 209, but sure to read more later on. Meanwhile...
Here's some of the best of the good stuff. Try not to think about the way people are reacting to the pandemic protocols as you read these:
The latter of which addresses people who stayed vs. people who left Moscow as the war front approached the city. Both sides changed their ideas about the validity of their choice, denigrated the other side for their choice, then changed their minds. It's reverse-engineered rationalization. (AKA the way that human beings do their business here on earth.)
Oh yeah...read a bit more...to page 213.
Day Eleven (DDRD 1,074): October 10, 2020
Read to page 250.
The voice of hope: "As for those who used to lurk in the shadows, they become prominent figures. Their deeds fill the newspapers. and it seems as if reason, science, humanity and honour have all died, as if they have vanished from the face of the earth. It seems as if the nation has degenerated, as if it has lost all sense of goodness and honor. But that's not true! It's simply not true! The strength and good sense of the people, their morality, their true wealth – all this will live forever, no matter how hard fascism tries to destroy it."
This is from Chepyzhin...and it is quickly countered by Viktor Shtrum, but...well, you know. It's still there, isn't it?
The narrative focus switches from Shtrum to Nikolay Krymov now. He is Zhenya's former husband, and an officer who has been sent to the front lines. If I remember correctly, he was the obsessive communist idealist who volunteered for the army. Looks like he is also going to be a character in Life and Fate. Also, I doubt that it is a coincidence that Nikolay Petrovich Krymov is also the name of a Russian painter (May 3, 1884— May 6, 1958) who did some lovely landscapes...which are still under copyright, but a Google image search of his name will bring up some nice examples.
I may read some more today, but even if I don't...hey, look...I'm over 1/4th of the way through this novel in a mere eleven days...and averaging close to 23 pages per day. If I keep up this pace, I'll be finished long before I thought I would be. The power of the Daily Devotional Reading, for sure.
In other news...
As I was having another go at Stalingrad this afternoon (read to page 277), it occurred to me that some time ago I bought a book about the functioning of Soviet society...so I went down into the basement and did a little dig about an hour ago, took a look around see which way the wind blow...and found this:
Day Twelve (DDRD 1,075): October 11, 2020
Read to page 319.
A thought on love, courtesy of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:"Once used to you, I'll cease to love
The one I could not love enough."
And I found that kind of interesting...and very much in line with what the ladies in my Crazy Ladies Group have to say about life, the universe, and everything...so I went looking for this Ziad Masri fellow. And there were a couple of his books for cheap on Amazon, but even better than cheap, you could read them for free if you have a KindleUnlimited membership, and as I am still on my free trial of that, I downloaded a book entitled Reality Unveiled: The Hidden Keys of Existence That Will Transform Your Life (and the World). Well. How can you see a title like that and not start reading, right? And pretty much from the get-go, Ziad was talking about (drum roll) quantum physics. (As in Viktor Shtrum's raison d'être, in case you're wondering wtf this has to do with the price of tea in China.) I read about the firing a photon at a slit thing...which I had just been talking about to a friend on the phone a day or two ago, so that was kind of odd. And then I read this line: "...it has been calculated that if you took the entire population of the Earth, all seven billion of us, and removed all the empty space from all of our combined atoms, the entire human race would fit into a single sugar cube." (Emphasis not added.) Well...that couldn't be true, right? There was a footnote, though, so I went to have a look at that. Said footnote directed me to https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-particle-physics-of-you, and I immediately thought, "Ah, Symmetry Magazine. Undoubtedly produced by a coven of New Agers who have been doing aromatherapy in their basements for the past seven years whilst subsisting on a died of mushrooms garnished with ground up crystals. Right? Well...not quite.
Day Thirteen (DDRD 1,076): October 12, 2020
Read to page 370.
There's a section where Vasily Grossman is describing an old man trying to read an article in this way:
"Figuring out the words was clearly a struggle. He was like a horse pulling a car up an icy hill; if he stopped for even a moment, he'd never get started again."
That's good, ennit?
I'm just a few pages short of the end of Part I, so I may have to go back later and finish that up. BTW, I didn't even know the novel was divided up into parts until I saw it in the endnotes section.
So hey: I'm averaging over 28 pages per day now...and it is effortless.
Day Fourteen (DDRD 1,077): October 13, 2020
Read to page 401. You know, I kind of missed the fact that the "peasant" Vavilov, for whom I felt such great love in the first chapters, had returned to the story. Now I'm wondering if he's been in it for awhile or just re-entered. Well...if Google Books' search engine can be relied on, then the answer is...
...he either just re-entered or I have conflated two different Vavilovs. Hmmm.
Also, I was initially disappointed at detecting a typo...the first one since the Introduction--
--but when I checked online (assume as little as possible), I discovered that this is actually a British variant. 😅
Speaking of British variants...it just occurred to me that my plans for "casting" this novel ended with Jude Law. But you know...I don't feel that I've had that much of a problem keeping up with characters, actually, so I have not been tempted to go back to the idea. For one thing, the way that Grossman works really anchors the important characters in your head. He'll introduce them in a group setting, then he'll spend the next bunch of chapters focusing in on one of them before going back to the group. Rinse, later, and repeat. And it works very well.
Day Fifteen (DDRD 1,078): October 14, 2020
Read to page 450. Which is pretty close to the halfway point. (24 pages away from the halfway point to be exact.)
"It may well be that, until the end of her days, a mother can never clearly distinguish between the fair-haired infant and the 45-year-old with grain temples and a wrinkled forehead."
Day Sixteen (DDRD 1,079): October 15, 2020
Read to page 470. Oh, shit...that's just 4 pages short of the halfway point. I'm going back in.
Did (to page 474)...then realized that my math from the other day was wrong. The halfway point is page 491. So maybe mañana.
Day Seventeen (DDRD 1,080): October 16, 2020
Read to page 504. Have break out notes for today's read HERE.
Day Eighteen (DDRD 1,081): October 17, 2020
Read to page 514 this morning, then had to stop for Power Rangers Beast Morphers, but I'll get back to Stalingrad later. Speaking of, it was more Hitler today...and more, "Wow, this sounds exACTly like Donald J. Trump and / or his minions. To wit:
"Obedience, blind stupidity and the ability to change one's spots – these are the civic virtues now required of a Berliner. Only the Führer has the right to think, not that he has any great love of thinking – he prefers what he calls intuition. Free scientific thought has been trashed. ...We have abandoned all shared categories; we have renounced universal truth, morality and humanity."
And this is pretty close to the bone:
"In his life, in his character and in everything Hitler did, there was one important constant: failure. Astonishingly, it was his repeated failures that constituted the foundation for his success.... deep in his heart he always felt the uncertainty of a young man who did badly at school...."
"Both before and after he came to power Hitler was essentially the same person – a petty bourgeois, a Philistine and a failure; the immense power he wielded allowed him to display on a pan- European stage all the propensities of an embittered, mistrustful, vindictive and treacherous psyche. The peculiarities of his character brought about the death of millions."
"Hitler's coming to power did not in any way lesson his sense of inferiority, which was too deeply rooted. His apparent arrogance was no more than a mask."
Just sayin', sir.
Read to page 550, the last pages whilst in bed awaiting sleep. Which was not forthcoming. In the past few chapters the assault on Stalingrad begins with the Nazis bombing the city, and its some astonishing and affecting stuff, for sure. There's one scene in a crowded bomb shelter wherein the people crammed into it start arguing with each other which just kind of sums up how human beings are. I really wanted to read more, but decided that it would be wiser to try to sleep.
Day Nineteen (DDRD 1,082): October 18, 2020
Read to page 582.
Volume 1: To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942
678 pages, $29 to $37
Volume 2: Armageddon in Stalingrad: September-November 1942
920 pages, $31 to $40
Volume 3: Endgame at Stalingrad: Book One: November 1942
680 pages, $34 to $40
Volume 4: Endgame at Stalingrad: Book Two: December 1942–-February 1943
768 pages, $32 to $40
Totals: 3,046 pages, up to $157
Oh, waitaminute...I forgot there's a 5th volume in this "trilogy."
Volume 5: Companion to Endgame at Stalingrad
848 pages, $66 to $75
So that puts us at 3,894 pages and up to $232. And it would probably take a year + of Daily Devotional Reading to get through them. As tempted as I am to plunge into this, I don't think I am ready for that kind of commitment.
On the other hand, let's not forget the LFPL...
So that's one problem almost solved. And get this...the Louisville Free Public Library has two copies of Volumes 1 and 2. How much do you want to bet that no one has checked any of these out in the past year or so? I could be wrong, I suppose...but all six books are available right now, so....
MAYbe I'll just check out the first volume and see how that goes, hmmm?
News as it happens.
Day Twenty (DDRD 1,083): October 19, 2020
And now, this:
Now, normally I am opposed to Greatest Hits packages. I mean...have you ever seen "All the Madmen," one of the greatest David Bowie songs EVer, on a Greatest Hits collection? But this does look interesting. And Alibris has a new copy for $22 (+ shipping). The LFPL doesn't have this, but, strangely enough, they do have this:
So I thought I'd start there. I put in my request a minute ago.
Read to page 628. Which is 46 pages. Hmpf. Didn't feel like it. Vasily Grossman did make me cry today, too. No spoilers, but it involved Viktor Shtrum, on of my favorite characters, and his mother-in-law. And it wasn't a big tragic scene or anything like that. But it was very tender and it just scorched me.
So it looks like my average page per day rate is currently a smidge over 32. Wow...if I'd stuck to my 10 pages per day rate, I would only be on page 200 right now. And it's not like I'm pushing myself, Au contraire, actually. I often make myself stop reading even when I want to turn some more pages. This is truly a great book. I am so relieved that Life and Fate will be continuing the story. I want these characters around for more than another 354 pages. (Or 10-ish days.)
Day Twenty-One (DDRD 1,084): October 20, 2020
Read to page 643 this morning, which brought me (to my surprise) to the end of Part II. I'm thinking that this probably means that Part III is going to move us into the Battle proper, since things were just getting started in that direction in Part II. And that made me wonder how many of the characters in Stalingrad will be a part of Life and Fate, so I dug out my copy--
.Day Twenty-Two (DDRD 1,085): October 21, 2020
Read to page 712. Ah, Vavilov. Characters like this make you want to be a better human being, y'know? Don't know how I read 50 pages today, since I really didn't have a lot of time between walking with Jacqueline, making three meals for three, doing dishes, bathing the cat, and watching a James Bond movie, but the pages were just peeling away today. Only bad news is...with only 253 pages of novel left, this could be over in as little as five days if I keep up that pace. And come to think of it, that's 253 minus however many pages of endnotes I've already read...which I'm guessing is about a dozen.
☹️
Day Twenty-Three (DDRD 1,086): October 22, 2020
Read to page 748.
Check out those teeny tiny people on the walkway. Yep. This thing is bigger than the Statue of Liberty. In fact, it's one of the tallest statues in the world. (#9 as of this writing, and 279 feet tall, in case you want the details.) According to the CBC story, 35,000 soldiers who died in the Battle of Stalingrad are buried beneath this statue...including Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov, who is a character in Vasily Grossman's novel.
So there's that. Still checking out the full-length movies.
Read to page 800. Oh, shit...only 92 pages of novel left. I might have to jump up and finish off the "compare and contrast" notes before I get too much farther. I don't want to finish this reading on NOTes.
(1) Leviathan 63 days, 729 pages
(2) Stalingrad 27 days, 982 pages
