Warning: strpos(): Empty needle in /homepages/5/d845057890/htdocs/clickandbuilds/LionessatLarge/wp-content/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails-advanced/classes/Environment.php on line 47
Russia – Lioness at Large

Russia

Literature Reviews

Vladimir Nabokov: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Hoo boy. This starts out really nicely, as the story of two Russian half brothers growing up remote from each other (even though in the same home), from which beginning we segue more or less seamlessly into the surviving younger brother’s quest for the life and identity of his elder sibling, who under the English […]

Read More
Blog

To Russia With Love

I’m not going to turn this into a political blog, but Ukraine’s national flower (here seen against the blazing blue skies of the Loire valley) will be heading my posts until Russian troops have left the country and the slaughter of innocent civilians has come to an end.  Бог з Україною (God be with Ukraine).

Read More
Fun and Games Literature Reviews

Martha Gellhorn: Travels with Myself and Another

  Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE   Festive Tasks Door 10 – Peace, Book: Read a book in which the ending of a conflict is a major theme. Gellhorn is a sharp observer and she has a way with words — I’d just wish she’d liked people and, for that matter, the places she […]

Read More
Cats Cooking - Food - Drink Fun and Games Lifestyle Literature Reviews

Battle of the Books Goes Feline: Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management vs. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace

24 Festive Tasks: Door 20 – Festivus, Bonus Task #2: Battle of the Books: pick two books off your shelf (randomly or with purpose); in a fair fight, which book would come out on top?  The fight can be based on the merits of the books themselves, their writing, or full-on mano a mano between […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

An “Out of My Reach” Book Wishlist to St. Nick

24 Festive Tasks: Door 14 – St. Nicholas’ Day / Sinterklaas, Task 1: Write a book wish list to St. Nick / Santa Claus for books that you’ve been eyeing but can’t justify the expense of purchasing.  (E.g., art books? Collector’s editions? Boxed sets?)   Dear Saint Nick, it would be really nice if one […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

Mary Kelly: The Christmas Egg

24 Festive Tasks: Door 17 – Winter Solstice, Task 2 (Yaldā Night – Persia / Iran): Stay up all night reading a good book (or at least stay up past your usual bedtime).   I stayed up until 3:00 AM last night reading the first half (approximately) of this book — which contrary to recent […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature Reviews

Festivus Feat of Strength: Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina vs. Astrid Lindgren: Pippi Longstocking

24 Festive Tasks: Door 19 – Festivus, Task 2: Battle of the Books:  pick two books off your shelf (randomly or with purpose); in a fair fight, which book would come out on top?  The fight can be based on the merits of the book itself, its writing, or full-on mano a mano between two […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature Music

Sleigh Rides

24 Festive Tasks: Door 16 – St. Lucia’s Day, Task 2: Compile a list of five or more carols, poems, short stories, novels or other pieces of writing that feature sleigh rides.   On the minus-twentieth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me … Two Christmas carols, one orchestral dance, one fairy tale, […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature Music

My Favorite Books with Music as a Plot Element

24 Festive Tasks: Door 21 – Kwanzaa, Task 2: Music is an important part of a Kwanzaa celebration.  Which is / are your favorite book(s) where music plays an important role in the plot?   In no particular order, books (of all genres, except for artist biographies)* that I love where music plays an important […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Cooking - Food - Drink Fun and Games Lifestyle Linked Items Literature

Books With Antonyms in Their Titles

24 Festive Tasks: Door 5 – Bon Om Touk, Task 4: The South Korean flag features images of ying / yang (the blue and red circle in the center) and four sets of three black lines each representing heaven, sun, moon and earth and, in turn, the virtues humanity, justice, intelligence and courtesy.  Compile a […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

Royalty Moonlighting as Commoners in Fiction

24 Festive Tasks: Door 10 – Russian Mothers’ Day, Task 2: Towards the end of the 17th century, there was a Russian apprentice carpenter and shipwright going by the name Peter Mikhailov in the Dutch town of Zaandam (and later in Amsterdam), who eventually turned out to be none other than Tsar Peter the Great, […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Linked Items Literature Reviews

Banine: Days in the Caucasus

Well, looks like I was tempting fate after all.  As it turns out, not every memoir set in the former USSR in the years before and during the Russian Revolution was really shouting out to be written.  This is definitely one such — which is particularly disappointing as the writer’s father was a leading Azerbaijani […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

BL-opoly: Dice Roll #25

 I may be tempting fate (especially since I really liked the book I just finished), but I decided to roll one more time after all: … which takes me to square 35, European Vacation — and I think that means the BL-opoly gods really, really want me to use up all of my novelty cards, […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

BL-opoly: Robot Card for Square 17 (“Why?”)

Here’s my robot card selection: 1. Cary Elwes: As You Wish 2. Sarah Bakewell: At the Existentialist Café 3. Banine: Days in the Caucasus 4. Gertrude Bell: A Woman in Arabia 5. Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom 6. Helene Cooper: The House at Sugar Beach 7. Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals 8. […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

BL-opoly: Independence Day Extra Rolls

Hooo boy.   So, it turns out my  Independence Day extra rolls are sending me right around the board.  Doubles, novelty cards … Anyway, here we go: I just finished my current read, which was for square 2 (“Who?”). My first roll, starting from there, sends me to square 9: The Stay-Cation — read a book […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Cats Linked Items Literature Reviews

Crowdsourced: More Books with a Difference – Fiction

You asked, Moonlight Reader?  To quote from one of my additional entries below:  “As you wish …” Without any further ado: Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies When Lillelara added A Place of Greater Safety to her list, I could have kicked myself —  because Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books were definitely among […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

Summer Reading 2019

  So, summer reading is shaping up as rather busy this year:   First of all, there is Summer of Sherlock, for which my reading list is already as long as a whole year’s worth of reading would have been for me once upon a time.  I’ll also be watching the two Rivals of Sherlock […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

Book Covers: Young Women with Flowers

24 Festive Tasks: Door 4 – Diwali, Task 4: During Diwali, people pray to the goddess Lakhshmi, who is typically depicted as a beautiful young woman holding a lotus flower.  Find 5 books on your shelves (either physical or virtual) whose covers show a young woman holding a flower and share their cover images.   […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Linked Items Literature

Happy Independence Day – and, my Freedom and Future Library

Related Blog Post: Book Recs Solicited: Freedom and Future Library Reading Project: Freedom and Future Library   Could there possibly be a better day on which to finally follow up on my Freedom and Future Library post? Truth be told, I’d been hoping to compile this much faster, but RL threw a major spanner in […]

Read More
BookLikes Imports Linked Items Literature

Book Recs Solicited: Freedom and Future Library

You’d have to be living under a rock buried somewhere halfway down to the center of the earth in order not to be aware that in recent years our beautiful world has been shaken up by a number of crises the likes of which I, at least, have not experienced in my entire lifetime — […]

Read More