Manic Bookstore Cafe

Last night I gave a dorm talk at Ohio State to try to explain the Sochi Olympics. My task was made much easier by NBC.com and the opening ceremony alphabet sequence, which took the Cyrillic alphabet and that sweet little Russian girl and laid out a narrative of Russian history and the achievements of Russian science and culture. But as I went through the presentation, I realized that there were a number of odd choices in how to represent Russian culture through its letters. So I've picked a few alternatives that in my mind fill in some of the gaps that the Russian Olympic organizers left out.   А   The first letter of the Russian alphabet is A, which stands for Азбука, or alphabet. Makes sense -- when people think of the Russian language, one thing they fear is those 33 letters that seem so impenetrable -- like the Russian soul or the vast taiga. The video clip takes us back to Cyril and Methodius who invented the Cyrillic alphabet, and thus to the roots of...

Vail and Genis's Russian Cuisine in Exile Teaching this course on Russian cuisine, my favorite book has become Petr Vail and Alexander Genis's Russian Cuisine in Exile . It's a wonderful set of essays that are part nostalgia, part recipe, part cultural commentary, part advice column ("If you want to buy a clay pot for stewing Russian soups, best to go to other immigrant shops -- African or Caribbean.") I'm quite sure they named the book after Gleb Struve's classic Russian Literature in Exile , but it is eminently more readable and inherently more fun. I couldn't help quoting Vail and Genis while making tea the other day for my students at our big Russian feast: "[The Russians'] habit of diluting tea with boiling water is a historical misconception. This custom arose from poverty and grew into a superstition according to which it is unhealthy to drink strong tea." The authors go on to explain that this is utterly preposterous, and t...