Weekend Reading Update - August 6, 2023 

I've been looking for more booktubers who read history. I think I'll go ahead and subscribe.

Pushkin press has a Dostoyevsky collection of ss that are some of my very favorites.

Brattle Book Shop!

Idk if its the first time this has happened on this channel but this is the first time I've seen you thoroughly grossed out by a story and I laughed everytime you paused and gave the wtf look and reconsidered the life choices you've made to arrive at this moment in your life.

Micah, I'm always fascinated with how broad your interests extend. Especially when it concerns history.

I enjoyed your thoughts, as always. A question that I occasionally have when listening to booktubers regards translations. I often hear "His translations are good" or "I try to avoid his translations" etc. What is the difference in a good or bad translation? I mean, how different can they be? I assume the basic elements of a story remain unchanged, so is it a matter of awkward word choices, or poor "flow?" It would be something I would be interested in seeing explored/discussed in a book tube video...compare/contrast a paragraph of section of the same work but from different translators. An aside thought...either you are becoming more frank with your comments, or you REALLY did not enjoy "The Christmas Tree and a Wedding", because you usually find SOMETHING good to say! Thanks for your efforts & for making time for your channel amid your other commitments!

I won’t feel bad about postponing _Decameron_ then. I imagine with a writer as prolific as Dostoevsky there’s bound to be some works that don’t sit that well with a given reader. (I’ve probably read enough of him; though I may one day tackle those same stories.)

I read The Christmas Tree and the Wedding a couple of years ago and was creeped out. I know this situation happened and it’s happening in the world today but I wasn’t expecting it which made it worse.

Apart from DNFing The Brothers Karamazov after 73 pages, I've never read anything by Fyodor MIkhaylovich Dostoyevskiy. I know that sounds shocking coming from someone who's been such a passionate Russophile for over 30 years now, someone who studied Russian and East European Studies at university, but I just never felt particularly moved towards him. If I ever have enough active subscribers to do my Decameron series, one of my videos will be about all the Decameron references and inspired lines in my own books. Some of my favorites, repeated across many books, include "this pearl among men," "I would have thought less of you if...," "Now, the deceiver lays at the mercy of the deceived," and "putting the Devil back into Hell." A number of my characters have also outright referred to the book and specific stories from it which mirror their own lives, like the King of Cypress waking up as if from a dream and radically changing his life, and the unjustly-accused Count of Antwerp hiding his two children in different places when they go into hiding abroad.

Very interested in what you said about "The Christmas Tree and A Wedding". Is it a story badly written, a well written story the purpose of which is to make you feel uncomfortable or something else? The reason I ask is I felt some what the same way with Chekhov's "An Incident". I can't say it is not well written but it's a horrible story. But because it's effective in bringing forth such feelings in the reader does that mean its actually good?

Did you read The Wager yet? With your recent seafaring and nautical reading I’m interested in your take as you have much more context about it then I did, which is none. I won’t say much, but it’s definitely my most disappointing read of 2023 and unlikely to be unthroned as such, and the audiobook narrator was infuriating approaching it as a melodrama. Had I the text to go to I would have, but it’s a highly waited upon book at the library and it would have been too long a wait. I am interested in reading Lord Byron’s grandfather’s actual account, so I wasn’t turned off completely.