Manic Bookstore Cafe

I'm not sure what came over me. It could be that it looked like it might start raining, and might even settle in for 24 hours or more (which it did). Or maybe because it was the day before school started for my kids. Or because I've only recently returned to my beloved kitchen with its marble pastry board and welcoming orange walls. Or because we had invited some friends over for dinner. Whatever the reason, I had a truly manic baking day yesterday. It was supposed to be hot out, but I had bought the muenster I usually use for Georgian Cheese Breads ( Khachapuri ), and that was the center of my meal plan. Khachapuri  are always a crowd pleaser, and I figured I would make cold soup to go with them. I had also grabbed an eggplant at the store in case I felt up to making eggplant caviar, though some people in the family thought that Russian food would be too heavy for this sudden warm weather. I was doubtful myself, since really good eggplant caviar requires standing at t...

About fifteen or so years ago, I went to a conference in Russia devoted to Pushkin and Dostoevsky. Anyone who knows Russian literature knows that these are two of the "greats," two authors who always dominate the reading lists of Russian courses in college -- whether general education survey classes or "The Russian Novel" seminars for advanced graduate students. Reading Pushkin and Dostoevsky is fascinating, a trip into the culture and psychology of 19th century Russia that lures lovers of crime and passion as well as disaffected teenagers dressed in black. But writing  about Pushkin or Dostoevsky takes chutzpah. They (along with Tolstoy) are the Shakespeares of Russian literature, and the number of books and articles written about each over the last several centuries reaches that indefinable Russian number t'ma  -- uncountable. That said, in my younger days I somehow got in with the Pushkinists and began attending their conferences in Russia to pr...

Bread line, Luhansk. Photo New York Times. "But to people standing in the bread and water lines that snake through the streets, life here is tough but far from catastrophic. In the predawn, the city comes alive with pedestrians carrying plastic water bottles, headed for the working fountains and grocery stores, on the assumption that fewer shells land early in the morning. One grocery had noodles, gum, sugar, eggs and vodka." ( NYT  14 August 2014) New York Times reporter Andrew Kramer seems surprised at the patience in Eastern Ukraine. One woman he interviewed commented: "I have everything I need but peace." Russians, and Ukrainians, are good at standing in line. Their patience is epic, legendary really. Some of the people standing in these lines were small children during World War II and lived through the Soviet experiment and its post-Soviet variant. They have come to understand better than most that the forces in the world are greater than the indi...

Remember signing up for the library summer reading program? This is something that many American children do. When I was small, I was able to go to the public library by myself on my bike starting in about 1st grade, and I was determined to begin with the As in fiction and read all the way through. Every week I took out seven books, and every week I returned for more. When my kids got to be 7, I granted them permission to get their own library cards and start going to the library by themselves. My daughter, naturally cautious, asked a friend to come over so that they could walk to the library together. My son, a few years later, was off like a shot. I received a voicemail on my cell phone from a dear friend who noted: "Just saw him heading down Xenia Avenue by himself. If this is fine, ignore the call, but if not, I thought you'd want to know." I assured her later that as long as she saw him on the stretch between our house and the library, that was fine. Anything fu...

“…I feel like I’m comin’ in at the end of something.” We’ve been vacationing for several weeks, and I have done no writing at all. I have, however, done a lot of reading, and visited numerous bookshops and libraries in the state of Washington and in British Columbia—the far upper corner of our country and the lower corner of Canada, what has seemed like approximately as far away as possible from my own usual haunts while still being in North America. One of the joys of vacation is allowing myself to swallow books virtually whole. Or maybe I am swallowed by them—I escape into their worlds. Apparently I even get a particular look on my face—at one point last week I was stirring pasta over my camp stove with one hand and holding my book with the other as I read, and my husband burst into laughter at a single glance my way. As I write, I am flying back across the country, thinking about the trip and about my many literary adventures. Andrea Barrett ’s stories of scientists an...