Kidsout founder Catherine Krongauz about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, the founder of the babyout search service Kidsout, children's writer and game editor of the Medusa newspaper, Ekaterina Krongauz, shares her favorite book stories.
I am the very person for whom intelligent parents are very upset that he does not read at all. I did not like reading in childhood so much that I left the room when my parents read to children. Here, of course, it is worth clarifying what they read, for example, the Iliad, and listening to it at the age of three (I'm the youngest of three children) is really unbearable. True, they say that at four I came out of the closet without pants and said: "I came out of the darkness mladaya with purple Eos fingers."
Well, in general, I did not read at all. But I have always been interested in people and stories about them. And my imagination, logic, and fantasy developed quite well - what else can I do if you don’t read, draw, and get bored all the time? I learned quite well how to catch stories and even know how to keep up the conversation about unread books. I was also lucky with my friends - they are very well read and educated. Therefore, in school, my companions sometimes wrote essays for me, and now great editors. For example, my girlfriend wrote an excellent essay for me, as I remember, on Blok's “Stranger,” but it seemed important to me to add something from myself, so I added the phrase “The block never wrote long poems” and by that gave out herself.
But if, for some reason, I started reading and I find it interesting, then the rest of my life stops: I can neither work nor talk to people until I finish reading. That is, I can, but I'm not at all interesting. Well, in a logical way, I can read books only about people and only with a plot. In this sense, I do not have a single book that influenced me, my personality. But there are human stories that have influenced me, and I do not always remember where they come from - from life, from a book, from a movie, from history. Actually, all these books, which I am talking about here, seem to me incredibly important for understanding human nature.
With reading, among other things, there was some kind of stupid problem. I read lying. And so, when you are lying so that it is convenient to read, you must always roll over from side to side so that you can put a thick part of the book on the bed and not hold on to weight. And this is a terribly annoying process. It becomes even worse only if it has a cold and because you are turning from side to side, you always have one nostril, then the other. And I fixed this whole Kindle situation - I don’t remember where it came from, but since then the main problem of turning it over has been solved completely. And I began to read.
Maria kruger
Blue Bead
According to my recollections, this is the first sensible long book that I read myself. This is a Polish story about the little girl Karolinka, who, when moving from an old apartment, finds a blue bead, a magic one: she fulfills desires, but from each completed one turns pale. For her immediately begins to hunt the vile witch Philomena. In general, a very exciting children's book. Its special value is that I thought that no one but me knew about it at all, but sometimes I found the same strange connoisseurs of Polish literature. However, it was recently reissued by the Pink Giraffe publishing house, and now everyone can read it too.
Sholem Aleichem
"Bloody joke"
One of my important reader features is that I don’t remember a book about a book just a year after reading it. So much so that I, even rereading, do not remember anything. Maybe it will soon be defined as a genetic mutation, and I can stop being a disgrace of an intelligent family. In general, I read this novel so long ago that I remember only the plot. The beginning of the twentieth century, two graduates of the gymnasium - a Jew Rabinovich and Russian Popov - exchange documents, and therefore their lives. The Russian boy, who begins to live the life of a Jew, finds himself in the midst of the famous Beilis case (that is, Russian Popov as Beilis), who was accused of letting Christian babies on matzoh.
Daniel Keyes
"Flowers for Algernon"
The story about Charlie's man with developmental features, which is involved in a scientific experiment to improve intelligence. He wants to experiment because he wants to become smarter. And take it. And he is getting wiser by leaps and bounds. He is fired from his job because he is starting to annoy everyone. He himself becomes uninteresting people, because he is smarter than them. His only close ones are a teacher from a boarding school for people with disabilities, in which he is in love, and Algernon, the mouse on which this experiment was conducted before Charlie. The most dramatic events begin to develop when Algernon begins to regress, and Charlie at this moment became much smarter than the researchers and tries to start experimenting himself.
Daniel Keyes
"Billy Milligan's Mysterious Story"
Incredible real story about a man named Billy Milligan, who had multiple personality splitting. It turned out that when he appeared before the court in the case of three rapes. Word for word - ten individuals of different ages, looks, nationalities, and languages have opened up. At first, the lawyers believed that he was breeding them, but they quickly believed them. Then the prosecutors believed that he and lawyers were throwing them away, but they also quickly believed. He was acquitted. Then they tried to merge similar personalities in pairs, almost achieved success, began to socialize - the local residents were outraged and sent him to a psychiatric hospital. From horror he split all the personalities and added a little more. In short, all the personalities of Billy was twenty-six, and it is very interesting.
Abraham Vergese
"Stone's cut"
In the missionary hospital in Addis Ababa, the American sister of mercy gives birth. No one understands how this is possible, but no one has any doubt that the children are from a local American surgeon. Two Siamese twins are born, the mother dies in childbirth, the surgeon merges. After the separation of both brothers - Marion and Shiva - a couple of local doctors take to him. More precisely, they are not a couple, but he loves her very much. The whole novel about communication and affection. As adults learn to love each other and be family. Like two brothers, who were joined by their heads, all their lives these heads clasped against each other, they separate, but they cannot disperse. And, most interestingly, about medicine in the absence of everything, prejudices, myths, anti-science and faith.
John irving
"House Rules of Cider"
When compiling this list, it becomes clear that I like all that - on the verge of vulgarity, ethics, pop spirituality and pop psychology. This story is about the orphan Homer Boom, who lives in a strange house - this is either an orphanage, or a hospital, and it turns out, moreover, an abortion clinic, but he does not know about it. And the chief doctor and sisters take care of him. Most of his life consists of a series of failed adoptions, after which he is returned back. Dr. Cedar raises him as a son. Then Homer learns that Dr. Cedar has been practicing abortions all this time. They have a wild controversy, and Homer leaves, believing that he will never, never, never do such a terrible thing. But, as is often the case, if there is no separation, then there is no separation. If you are repelled by your parents, someday you will become the same.
Dina Kaminska
"Notes of a Lawyer"
In the summer of 1965, the body of a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl was found in a pond in the village of Peredelkino. Residents of the village appealed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and complained that they could not solve the case. Immediately after that, two boys were arrested, classmates of the victim, who very quickly confessed to rape and murder. Dina Kaminskaya, a Soviet lawyer, became the defense of one of them (she is known for defending Bukovsky and other dissidents). In this case, Kaminsky had no chances: pressure from above, the fifties, the case should be closed soon, the boys gave evidence, there is a witness - the death machine is not only running, but there are no chances at all that something can stand in the way. But Kaminskaya does not believe in confessions, and the process begins.
What is described in this book is the answer to the question of how a decent person could work as a lawyer during the most hellish unjust court in the USSR. Kaminsky was clinging to the protocol, for the fact that this system had to follow its own made-up rules and could stumble over them. She distracted the judge and entered into the record, it would seem, the answers to minor questions, which then forced this system to allow appeals. She describes the little things, the crap, the tiny possibilities that real justice has grown from. Just the most exciting trial I read about.
Nina Pavlova
"Easter Red"
On the morning of April 18, 1993, at Easter in the Optina Hermitage, three people were killed: hieromonk Basil, monk Trofim and monk Ferapont. Monks Ferapont and Trofim were in the bell tower - they were killed first. Hieromonk Basil was going to confess to the church, heard something wrong and ran to the rescue - he was killed by the third. The book is devoted to three stories of completely different people - like the novel "King Louis the Saint", in which the author tells about five people who died when the hanging bridge collapsed, and tries to understand what made them all come to the bridge at the same fateful moment.
This is the story of what life in the nineties represented, like three different men with different education, different backgrounds came to the church, and then to the monastery. And what was their life and faith at the time of the murder. This honest non-fiction. Well, this is such an amazing modern life of the saints.
Evgeny Vodolazkin
"Laurel"
This is a fictional life of the fifteenth century. Herbalist Arseny lives with his grandfather and learns craftsmanship, then turns on her beloved, she becomes pregnant and dies in childbirth with the child due to the fact that Arseny did not take her to the hospital in time. All his further life is devoted to the atonement of this sin - life outside of marriage and pride. He becomes a healer, a holy fool, a pilgrim: at some point you simply cease to understand at what time the novel takes place. As a result, Arsenius takes monastic vows and becomes a laurel.
Maria Kikot
"Confession of a former novice"
Human relations with the church and inside the church interest me very much. This book is a diary of a woman who ended up in a nunnery and describes it as a women's prison. Hellish temptations, insane, greedy hypocritical abbess. In general, the story that most likely describes the life of most Russian nunneries. This is largely due to what happens if a person who seeks God to be forced to rule over people, in part with the structure of the Russian church system. The psychology of small groups and the prison experiment, embodied in the life of a convent, are all the most interesting for me.