Thanks for your interest,
Personally I'm not familiar with the name "Strakov". Are you absolutely certain that the name is spelled right, could it not be "Strakhov"? Anyhow i've also done some research on internet, but unfortunately so far I didn't come across any well known person with this name or "Strakhov" for that matter.
In the event per chance i would still find any reference to these names, be assured i'll let you know.

posted by vnmlibrary at 6:12 am (EST) on Jul 20, 2008

I too am about to read some Tolstoy- the Cossack tales, perhaps. I read War & Peace over the summer of 1986. Just like the real world, the WAR is bad and the PEACE is very good.

good luck, tovarisch!

posted by g_knoll at 4:10 pm (EST) on Jul 8, 2008

Hi Tyler,
You wrote to me a year ago and I have only just come across your note... "Have you read David Mitchell's Black Swan Green?..."

Yes, but gave up on it as it was like a poor first novel full of familiar adolescent nostalgia. A disappointing backward step. Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten are from another universe entirely. I am Scottish and so have a read a fair few books from here and it is The Silver Darlings that sticks in my mind like a shining herring on a darkening sea. Sunset Song is a masterpiece that every literate Scot reads at some point, but I found the other novels more than I wanted on dour North East life. Try "The House with the green Shutters" instead. The greatest book from here, bearing in mind my love of Kafka, Camus, and Murakami is Alisdair Gray's truly astonishing novel, "Lanark"- 2 great books in one uneasy package, like Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde. I apologise for patronising you if you have read all these already. If you have, what did you think?

Gary

posted by g_knoll at 7:19 pm (EST) on Jun 25, 2008

I'm familiar with Dunnett though I've never read any of her work. One of my favourite authors, Guy Gavriel Kay, swears by her, to the point of apparently having gone up and knocked on her front door and introducing himself when he was a student. I'll have to check her out.

posted by ianracey at 12:18 pm (EST) on Jun 23, 2008

Hi Tyler,

I've just finished War and Peace (in Norwegian: Krig og fred) and some weeks ago I finished 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot (both novels were group reads in 'Group Reads - Literature' a marvellous group at LT, I see you are a member). Two voluminous and great novels. I don't participate in reading 'The Age of Innocence' with GR-L, instead I'm reading 'David Copperfield' (in English), and I imagine it a 'lighter read' than W&P and Middlemarch. I guess you've read some (or all?) Dickens as you've got novels by him on your bookshelves and are a member of "What the Dickens...?" (I am,too). Any recommendations?
I'm going to read more by Dickens later on, since I've recently received a box (Collectors Library) with some of his novels. And last week I bought four Dickens books (in Norwegian) at a second hand book shop here in Bodø. Until now I've only read 'Great Expectations' (in Norwegian: Store forventninger (title translated word by word)) and I liked that one very much.
Now and then I re-read my favorite author Knut Hamsun (Norwegian, Nobel Prize 1920). See my library.

Tusen takk for adding my library (Tusen = 1000, takk = thank you)!!
Happy reading.

kik :-))

posted by kjellika at 6:45 am (EST) on Jun 21, 2008

I know you tracked me down ages ago, but I've been so busy this year that I've barely spent any time here. It is Emma Johnson! In the process of trying to update her library -- I should never go a whole year without adding titles, I've completely forgotten what books I've acquired.

posted by Tafadhali at 1:33 pm (EST) on May 29, 2008

Thanks for adding me as a friend. Your library is fabulous, and yes, I did love Sacred Games. I also enjoyed his Red Earth and Pouring Rain.

posted by hollyrock at 10:07 pm (EST) on Feb 29, 2008

Thanks for adding me as your friend, it certainly does look like we have many reading tastes in common. Dickens is a particular and long-time favourite of mine and I've recently started reading Jane Austen, an author who I previously thought I didn't like. I also love children's books, especially Michael Morpurgo who I would urge anyone to read if they haven't already. I'm very pleased to make your aquaintance!

posted by NorahBarnacle at 1:22 pm (EST) on Jan 29, 2008

Sorry, apparently "harrowing" is my word of the day.

posted by makifat at 4:12 pm (EST) on Dec 9, 2007

The Plague and 1984 should be required reading at this point in time. If you are interested, my blogspot site has a short personal discussion of these books. Just look under February 2007. Yes, Blindness was harrowing and superb.

I understand McCarthy is a love him/hate him sort of writer (sometimes simultaneously), but The Road was quite affecting. One was left with the feeling that this wasn't a tired exercise in a overused genre (post-apocalyptic fiction), but a harrowing and achingly sad view of a future that seems not just possible, but probable.

posted by makifat at 4:11 pm (EST) on Dec 9, 2007

Happy to make your acquaintance!

Thank you for your comments on my humble review of Graham Greene. Considering your own credentials, it is high praise indeed! Thank you also for adding me to your interesting libraries list. I have a garage full of boxes just itching to be catalogued, so check back sometime. I will have fun nosing through your library as well...

posted by makifat at 3:13 am (EST) on Dec 9, 2007

Ahem... I actually *am* L ouisa B urnham! I'm teaching medieval history (surprise, surprise) at Middlebury College (where Jane Chaplin is in the Classics Department, so there's something of an Old Girls' Network).

I use WARP all the time (I keep my copy on my "essential reference" shelf along with with the Oxford Book of Popes and the Penguin Dictionary of Saints), and I'm delighted to hear that there's a new edition coming out. In fact, I xeroxed a few pages out of WARP for two students just last week who were having trouble writing introductions. And I often find myself quoting from it without realizing it! I may have graduated 25 years ago, but I swear that Expos taught me everything I know about writing.

Soon, you'll get a chance to see how I turned out as a writer. My first book, So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: the Beguin Heretics of Languedoc, will be coming out from Cornell University Press around Christmas. I've done my best to make it enjoyable as well as scholarly -- the stories of nine heretics who struggled against inquisitors and repression at the beginning of the fourteenth century. I'm very excited, and very glad to be finished with the text, the proofs, the indexing, the permissions...

It's lovely to see you here on LibraryThing! I'm slowly working my way through my library, but it will surely take ages before I get everything on line. It's fun, though!

Best --

Louisa

posted by naprous at 2:34 pm (EST) on Nov 3, 2007

The copy of EA Robinson books we have are all reprints. This particular one is a small hardback put out in 1996 by Tillbury House Publishers. =)
Kathy

posted by Oklahomabooklady at 2:44 pm (EST) on Aug 16, 2007

Tyler,
In response to your question... my tags of "children's" and "young adult" are somewhat ambiguous. All of my picture books are classified as "children's". In addition, a number of books that I had read to me or that I read on my own at a young age are included, as well as a few that I *would* have been able/likely to read then, had I owned them. "Young adult" books are more generally longer ones with more complex plots, that I would estimate as good reading for ages 8-13 or thereabouts. As said, there is no definite rule distinguishing the two: only a vague recollection of when I first encountered that book.
Most of the classics like "Alice in Wonderland" or "The Secret Garden" are classified as "children's", I believe, since I originally read them in early youth. They could just as easily qualify as "young adult".
I hope that satisfies your interest. :)
-Molly

posted by tehhen at 9:09 pm (EST) on May 23, 2007

Tyler,
Actually, I don't own The Hollow Tree and Deep Woods Book, but it is on my wishlist, along with The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book. I do own Hollow Tree Nights and Days. The Hollow Tree stories were among my mother's childhood favorites. Though my siblings and I never owned any of the books while growing up, we used to love listening to Mom tell us all about "Mr. Coon, Mr. Crow, and Mr. Possum." Now that I have read some of the stories for myself, I understand why she loved them so much. I hope my daughter (now only three) will enjoy them someday as well.

posted by teresee39 at 10:35 pm (EST) on May 17, 2007

Dear Tyler,

It's lovely to hear from you. I now know more about you than ever I did on Trollope-l. I have a hunch I may have put some of your postings online on my website. After my book I did put some of the group reads we had on my website.

I am still an English teacher and no end in sight as yet.

Trollope-l is now a silent place mostly. I post pretty regularly but it's really me using the place as a blog.

Ellen

posted by ellenandjim at 8:55 pm (EST) on May 9, 2007

Thanks for the recommendations! I haven't read The Shadow Lines, I will have to check that out. I have read a Scot's Quair - I spent some time studying in Edinburgh, so I read a lot of the Scottish standards, and they're some of my favorites. I'm very partial to Jessie Kesson's books.

posted by jagmuse at 9:31 am (EST) on May 8, 2007

Thanks. I'm finishing a master's in drama, so I've been reading everything from the Greeks through today.

posted by djsanders at 8:47 pm (EST) on May 3, 2007

I appreciate and accept your offer. I will add you to my watch list so that I can keep track of what you recently enter. At the moment, I cannot afford to send for any books, but I'll let you know when I have more funds. I live in Houston and we recently had a Friends of the Library booksale. I wanted to go, but when I was realistic and honest with myself, I was forced to admit that I have higher priorities than buying books. It seems like blasphemy just to write that, but there it is.

posted by harambeegirl at 8:15 pm (EST) on Apr 28, 2007