As always, I'm reading many books at the same time.

The Kreutzer Sonata; by Leo Tolstoy
I thought I'd breeze through this book in an hour or two, but it's taking me much longer. I forgot that none of Tolstoy's books are easy reading, heh. So no matter how short the story is, it's not going to be a quick read. (Doesn't help that I'm a slow reader.)

I'm not sure how I feel about the book so far. While I can't help but agree with the main character's narrative at times, there are a lot of things that just make me go 'huh..?', and in a rather angry way at that. I've a poor choice of words here, but he seems to be a feminist and a sexist at the same time, and it's a befuddling combination.

Flight of a Butterfly; Various
A small collection of hokku, read for JLC2. I had thought in vain, once more, that I'm going to go through this one fast, because seriously, how long can a 300+ page book with only three lines on each page take you? :P But it turns out that I stop after nearly every poem to contemplate on it for an hour. The biggest part of the book is taken up by Basho (works of whom I've finished reading already), and now there are just small "trial versions" for many other poets.

Maria Fedorovna's Diaries
It's one of the very painful books to read, at least for me. Truly, it's just a simple narrative of her days (1915 and beyond), and truly, I know what's about to happen most of the time (I'm not the best History student, but not knowing that would've put me to grave shame), but it doesn't make it any easier. Though, reading Nikolai's diary two years ago was much worse.

Labels: books, history, japanese literature challenge 2, memoirs, poetry, russia, russian

Just finished watching it, first thoughts, very jumbled and messy.

I may not ever rewatch this film, but I will definitely recommend it to anyone I know, should they express interest in seeing something I've recently enjoyed. This film has beautiful aesthetics, and in minutes I will be roaming the web finding as many screenshots as I can to save and browse through when I am in need of inspiration.

Funny, I'm not the hugest fan of cakes and pink and baby blue... Perhaps things change.

I have no idea how accurate this film is, history wise. To be honest, I'm one of those people who are willing to butcher up history to please their feeling of aesthetic appeal. This film has definitely done a wonderful job in just that -- aesthetically pleasing, to the core.

I wish I could still eat sugar.

Labels: history, movie

Diary of the Last Russian Emperor;
It's not the complete diary I'm reading, all I could find was this smallish book, December 1916 - June 1918. He was a fascinating character. Diary entries are very short and straight to the point.

He liked long walks and read a lot. Loved his family and his country.

His execution was an abominable crime. I don't bother myself with hating Communism & Bolshevik party, since it's just a stupid thing to do and is a huge waste of time and nerve cells; but this? The whole family! The children!

There you go. An Unforgivable for you.

Labels: books, history, memoirs, russia