How My NaNoWriMo Was Hijacked …
November turned out to be a busy month for me: I had a lot of experiments at work, had to prepare a mini-course on immunology for Imperial College students. I’m an impulsive person. All my life I tried...
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Theme – a Blurred Line between Grand Literature and the Firewood Material
To me, books are not worth reading just for entertainment purposes. I want to learn something about the world and about myself, I want to be provoked into thinking about important issues. Reading is a...
View ArticlePoSt Valentine’s: Top 13 Timeless Russian Love Stories
Today’s post is all about famous Russian love stories. Some of them are straighforward romance, others are psychological or political thrillers. But in the end, all of them are about love. To download...
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Couch Potato and Self-Perfection: Oblomov vs Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Now, there can’t be two more different books than Oblomov and Jonathan Livingston Seagull save for two things. The first one is that both became instant classics after their publication and still enjoy...
View ArticleMusic. Video. Drama
I’m not dead. Yet. Though I’ve been subjected to some degree of peril lately. I haven’t posted for a while, but it doesn’t mean I’ve been slacking. This month I’m attending two scientific conferences,...
View ArticleLondon Book Fair 2013: Empowered Authors and Digital Revolution
London. Book. Fair. These three words I’ve been uttering non-stop for the past three weeks. When I arrived at Earls Court on Monday, 15 Apr 2013, I was thrilled with the variety: hundreds of pavilions...
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Read Russia: Russian Literature in the Spotlight
While the London Book Fair 2013 is still fresh in my memory, I’ll talk about the Read Russia Showcase, which I attended at the LBF. Read Russia is an initiative aiming to raise awareness about Russian...
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FAQ or a Quick Guide on How To Be Awesome (Writer) For Newbies
Friends and new acquaintances often ask me questions like – why do I write, how does one write a novel, where to start, how does one publish a book… Instead of rambling for hours in attempt to answer...
View ArticlePlants and Literature
Johann Goethe is one of my role models, he was a multitalented person, most known for his literary work and especially his masterpiece, Faust. Goethe was also a botanist, a specialist in plant...
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Ambiguity and Clarity. Why Some Books Are Hard to Get Through
I admire clear succinct prose, like Hemingway’s. And I also like beautiful style of Oscar Wilde, where every word matters even though the language is poetic and can be quite elaborate at times. Both...
View ArticleModern Russian Authors: Boris Akunin
One of the most popular searches leading to my blog is ’modern Russian literature’. So, I’m starting a series of blog posts about contemporary Russian authors and their books. I’ll start with one of...
View ArticleVladimir Sorokin. Modern Russian Master of Word
Vladimir Sorokin is often called L’Enfant terrible of the Russian literary establishment.Yet mostly this is envy, as Sorokin’s word-wielding skills got him a reputation of the master of prose and put...
View ArticleRussian Scifi. Sergei Lukyanenko
I was brought up on classical literature, there wasn’t much else in my parent’s library, save for some detective stories that never appealed to me since I considered Crime and Punishment was the way to...
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Size Matters or… Does the Word Count Speak Volumes About a Book?
photo credit – Tom Murphy VII (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.0...
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Shame and Purity. Tatiana Moskvina
Tatiana Moskvina (photo credit – Alexei Balakin, Wikimedia Commons) Very often incredibly talented people are modest and underappreciated. Three years ago I have read a novel that thrilled me to...
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Made in Bionia. The Planet in Danger
My next book, a sci-fi mystery called Made in Bionia, is at editing stage. I penned the first music theme to introduce you the starting event of the story – the ocean is poisoned and the sea life is...
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Modern Russian Writers: Ludmila Ulitskaya and Her Soviet Chronicles
Ludmila Ulitskaya (photo credit – Dmitry Rozhkov, via Wkimedia Commons) The Soviet Union collapsed 22 years ago and we now have the whole generation of writers in Russia thinking about the recent...
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From Businessman to Writer: Andrei Rubanov. Russian Prison
Andrei Rubanov presenting his book Chlorophilia Many writers create amazing things they’ve never lived through just out their imagination. Still I find writers who experienced terrifying shortcomings...
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Modern Russian Authors: Tatiana Tolstaya. Slynx and the Russian language
Tatiana Tolstaya (photo credit – Водник, Wikimedia Commons) Tatiana Tolstaya is one of the most prominent media figures in the modern Russian society, she’s also a publicist and a writer of short...
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Ender’s Game. Survival vs Genocide
What victory to one is extinction to another. Ender’s Game is a film adaptation of the first book in Orson Scott Card’s famous YA sci-fi series. It’s the story of a young boy called Ender Wiggin...
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