Enia started reading The patriots by Sana Krasikov
"When the Great Depression hits, Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn College for what appears to be …
I’m reading Soviet-American literature like I’m writing a dissertation on it.
StoryGraph describes me as "Mainly reads fiction books that are reflective, emotional, and dark."
The rest of me is sfba.social/@eniatitova
More of what I've read and reading here: app.thestorygraph.com/profile/eniatea
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"When the Great Depression hits, Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn College for what appears to be …
I’m reading Soviet-American literature like I’m writing a dissertation on it.
Content warning mild as usual
This book focuses on the story of M Gessen's relatives surviving the Holocaust and the Soviet regime. And I was struck by how miraculous her family's story seems. I've felt the same way about the stories I read and heard from others. I've had the same said to me. and I think the reason for that is... surviving from 1917 to 1946 truly was a miracle. I looked this up: Belarus's population in 1914 was 8,961,800. it is barely greater than that today. After the Civil War and holodomor it drops as low as 5M in 1926. It barely recovers through 1937, only to be destroyed during the war. So 4M people are lost between 1914 and 1926, and then at least another 2.5M are lost during the war, nearly a million of them Jews. So out of a population of 10M, if your Jewish grandparents who grew in Belarus survived the war, they were among just 100K people who did (if my back of envelope math is correct). No wonder we're all cousins, and our grandparents' biographies feel made up.
It only seemed appropriate to read a book by an indigenous author with Indigenous People’s Day coming up. The Round House had been on my shelf for a while. Highly recommend this: a gripping story, with an unusual narrator. I literally carried it with me running errands in case I had a couple minutes to read it in the checkout line.

"Natalia Ginzburg, one of Italy's great writers, introduced A Family Lexicon, her most celebrated work, with an unusual disclaimer: "The …
I absolutely inhaled this book in 48 hours.
The plot deals with an apartment building community populated by 4 families, who have all chosen to live together in an effort to create a “village” to support them in raising their children in modern day Korea defined by high costs of living, demanding jobs, long commutes to see relatives.
With this book, the author deftly navigates the question of why have so many grown alienated from their families and neighbors.
In my own personal circle of housing advocates there’s often talk of how communal housing would address SF’s housing affordability crisis. And every time it comes up, I think “I would rather let someone scrape my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon than live in communal housing.” I have never liked having roommates, I barely like living with romantic partners. Noooo thank you.
The modern outcome of many people choosing to …
I absolutely inhaled this book in 48 hours.
The plot deals with an apartment building community populated by 4 families, who have all chosen to live together in an effort to create a “village” to support them in raising their children in modern day Korea defined by high costs of living, demanding jobs, long commutes to see relatives.
With this book, the author deftly navigates the question of why have so many grown alienated from their families and neighbors.
In my own personal circle of housing advocates there’s often talk of how communal housing would address SF’s housing affordability crisis. And every time it comes up, I think “I would rather let someone scrape my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon than live in communal housing.” I have never liked having roommates, I barely like living with romantic partners. Noooo thank you.
The modern outcome of many people choosing to live separately and aggressively insisting on privacy comes at least partially from so many feeling the same way. Yes we can romanticize how our ancestors had the literal village but having that village came with costs. Nosy neighbors, lack of physical and mental privacy, being forced into maintaining relationships with people you don’t like.
so seeing this book expose this truth so deftly was really satisfying. It’s a great read.