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230 reviews for:
The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Elif Batuman
3.68 AVERAGE
230 reviews for:
The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Elif Batuman
3.68 AVERAGE
Reading this book is like listening to a friend passionately describe their travels abroad and how it relates to their PhD in Russian lit, with little asides mentioning people they dated, stories from undergrad, leg contests they judged, and the like. This friend is so excited to tell you what happened that even though you don't have the background in Russian lit to contextualize it all, it's totally engaging, and maybe you do a little googling and pick up a copy of Anna Karenina because their obsession is contagious.
I didn’t like it as much as the novels, but loved The Possessed chapter and analysis. I want to learn more about mimetic desire!
More or less adds up to a collection of pretty good New Yorker essays
I've known people like Elif Batuman--brilliant people who can't reply to the question "How are you today?" without a.) quoting literature, and then b.) quoting some obscure but relevant work of critical theory (and then maybe c.) adding an interesting bit of historical trivia, just for fun). It can take awhile to realize that, for this kind of person, that is actually how they feel--they've answered your question, you just might have to work a little harder to translate it into an "I'm fine" or an "I've been better." The Possessed is a book by, about, and for this kind of person, and for those of us who enjoy following them down their twisty, sometimes obsessive, often wise and utterly delightful paths. (I also feel like Batuman wins bonus points for making me want to re-read Pushkin--I didn't think that could happen, but This Kind of Person is notoriously persuasive...)
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I majored in Russian language, culture and literature in college. This memoir brought back memories of professors, conferences, a visiting Russian poet, and my semester abroad. Strange, funny, and surreal, with an unexpected chapter set in Uzbekistan, which gets me a little further along in my quest to read across the world.
challenging
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
“Witty” and “charming” are the words that first come to mind after reading this book, but they don’t quite capture the spirit of youthful adventure and curiosity that prevails through this entertaining travelogue. It is an easy read with many amusing observations of culture and literature, but is disjointed as times.
I loved much of this book, and I really wanted to love the sections on Samarkand, but boy did it drag in places. I think I could've read endlessly about the bizarre behavior of Gulya and her yogi husband, though. I found the section on Demons and Stavrogin as a dark-mirror image of Prince Myshkin particularly interesting from a literary criticism standpoint, but by far the book's biggest strength is in Batuman's depictions of the people she meets, many of whom seem like they've wandered in from a Dickens novel (or I guess, in the interest of being on-theme, a Dostoevsky novel--really more like Gogol, but he doesn't get much play in this book): cartoonish, outsize, and endlessly entertaining in their eccentricities.
i️ will read anything elif writes but this was truly a wonderful experience… also muzaffar is a legend