Books · Observations · People · Humour
But remember: you too, exuding contagion, will lie a rotting corpse, you, sun of my eyes, my living star, you, radiant seraph. You too, my beauty, you too will be touched by decay, And you will rot down to the bones, Dressed in flowers to the sound of mournful prayers,
Books · Observations · People
1913: Anna Akhmatova, aged 24, regrets that she can never take back her unkissed lips. How swiftly the years do sail by, to be sure
NB! · Books · Observations
Seasoned bibliophiles advise what to do if valuable books get wet. Freeze them at once! And that is no joke
NB! · Books · Observations
Books · Observations · Society · Humour
Nothing special, just the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in the company of our ambassador Mikhail Kamynin, loading up on Russian books. What, one wonders, will Señor Rebelo de Sousa (by Portuguese standards, still a short surname) be reading tonight? Apart from my Telegram channel, naturally. I can
Coming Up · Books · Observations
Meanwhile, Dostoevsky, one of the country's finest bookshops, is representing Russia and Russian literature at the Lisbon Book Fair, one of the oldest cultural festivals in Portugal. On the stand I see not only the classics and editions devoted to Dostoevsky, but also a good deal of ordinary
NB! · Books · People · Humour
Books · Moscow · Observations · Society Pages · Humour
In Yury Trifonov's immortal novella “The Exchange” there were two design bureaux, No. 2 and No. 3: the Threes played five-minute blitz chess, the Twos played ping-pong. Of course, a more obvious example of the passion for “small tennis” is the duels between the institute staff
Books · Observations · Humour
On 18 August 1958 Nabokov's "Lolita" was first published in the USA and for the second time in English. The cover of the New York: Putnam's edition bore the legend "by the author of Pnin". What sort of Pnin was that? It
Geography · Maps · Books · Observations · Humour
The authors of a curious little book, "Atomic Energy in Aviation and Rocket Technology" (1961), seem to be asking us: what, exactly, matters most in a map? Fidelity of scale, beauty of line, the number of dragons and sea monsters in the margins, the power to frighten, or,
Cinema · Books · Observations · New York
Yet Another Unsolved Artistic Parallel. The image of the bird lady in the film "Home Alone 2" is, beyond doubt, a nod to a classic, and not only in idea and emotion but in quite exact visual correspondence with the original reference, the lonely bird woman of Pamela
NB! · Archive · Books · Observations · Humour
An insert in the collected works of Stalin asking that the book bearing this personal label be returned should any defect be found in it. One does not, of course, envy the inspector after whose check a flaw or error turns up in a book by Stalin. Oh, one does