Recent Reading, Part One: Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

Sometimes, in order to help stanch the boredom that may consume you when you set out to tackle a novel, it helps to read more than one book at a time. Read for a certain amount of time, or a certain number of pages in one book, then before you die of boredom, switch to something else. It is an easy way to refresh your straining attention span. Then, before you know it you will not only have read one book, but a couple, or a few, or twenty.

Recently I have been reading three novels, reading fifty pages in one, then the next, then the third, then back to the first for the next fifty. These novels range from 200-250 pages each, so I was hoping to be done in five days, reading fifty in each every day. I don't always get to all three, so it has taken a couple weeks, but I feel fairly satisfied if I get through at least fifty in at least one. The three novels:
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Typee by Hermann Melville
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

I know what you are thinking. . .two guys named Herman. This was not intentional and did not occur to me until after I began. Interesting comparison can ensue when doing this.

So, the first one I have finished, also the shortest (200 pages in my copy) was Fathers and Sons, a Russian novel, translated, written around 1862. It is a well known Russian novel; some even consider it one of the first of the genre, along with Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, one of the next on my list.

It was good. I would recommend it as a good introduction to Russian lit. It's mainly about the generational divide between the characters in the novel, and how they deal with the nihilistic beliefs of one of the main characters, Bazarov, who is representative of an incipient way of thinking in Russia. Check it out, if you are so inclined. It's a quick read.
incipient (adjective): beginning to exist or appear; in an initial stage: an incipient cold.

By the way, I just caught the Hold Steady on Letterman while typing this. Find a way to hear their new album. Good stuff.

Part Two: Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, coming soon.