Blog Posts by Subject: Slavic and Baltic Literature

I hope you have enjoyed reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich.  Please share your thoughts and favorite excerpts about story or Leo Tolstoy and take a moment to consider and discuss any of the questions posted below.

After the disappointment of The Fig Leaves are Falling, Dorothy Loudon got a great part in a new musical with much more promise, but this one didn’t even make it to Broadway, despite being, without question, artistically superior.

At lunchtime today I finished reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. (Tolstoy pictured here, courtesy of NYPL Digital Gallery.) I read the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation, which moved along very well, and I read the whole thing on an electronic reader. It took me just about two months to read, starting it exactly this past July 1. I have wanted to read it for awhile, and I am glad I did. However, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the book.

As a professional librarian at the main reference desk, I do whatever it takes to respond to a particular question, and I never become judgmental about the quality of that question. That’s Library School 101. I will admit, however, to wondering sometimes where certain questions come from, or what it might mean for the culture at large when a number of people start asking the same question at the same time. For instance, what should I make of the fact that there have been several requests lately--by New Yorkers, no less!-- for books about vampires? Is it because Halloween is coming? Are they folklorists, horror literature fans, or just people who are trying to distract themselves 

From the start, my goal in this blog was simply to emphasize what I regard as highlights of the library’s collection, specifically in the realm of literature . . . but I’ve begun to wonder if there isn’t another unifying element, or, if you will, a hidden agenda. Whatever else I’m writing about, I always seem to end up trying to convey my profound love of books and reading. This has long been one of my defining characteristics, long before there was a blog (or even an internet).

Nabokov, in Lectures on Literature, writes:

“Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little