Currently reading
Alex
The Glass Room
Peter the Great: His Life and World
If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children
Skin Deep
The Good Daughter
A Boy in Winter
The Tie That Binds
The Idiot (Everyman's Library, #254)
The Velvet Hours
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
Note to self for 2017....... you don't have to finish a book that you are not connecting with. You have purchased it, you have tried it, you don't have to finish it. Occasionally I struggle though books I am not enjoying in the hope that it will turn around and this happens to be one of those that I should have left aside after 100 pages as I just wasn't enjoying the read.
Memories from Moscow to the black Sea is an account of the author Teffi's journey from Moscow to Ukraine 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Teffi (1872 -1952) wrote poems plays and stories and was renowned in Russia for her wit and powers of observation in her writings. Her real name was Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, and like many Russian intellectuals was initially in favour of social change. She was a very popular writer in Russia, and was a favourite of both tsar Nikolai II and Lenin. She supported the 1905 Revolution and she wrote for various Bolshevik newspapers, sometime later Teffi became a critic of the Bolshevik party.
I purchased a hardback copy of this book on a recent shopping trip and was so disappointed that I didn't connect with the author's account of her escape from Russia as the Bolsheviks were taking over that country. The account is told with humor which apparently is consistent with her works but for me I found it forced here and the book became tedious. The account contained little factual content and I am aware that this was on propose but I found connect the reader to the time and place. I felt the humor just didn't seem to fit with the panic and brutality of the time. The story didn't come across with any emotion for me and I struggled through to the end but could have left this one to one side after 100 pages.
However other readers may enjoy the sense of humor in this book and while it's an easy read I am afraid this was just an ok book for me.
