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The adventures, observations, and struggles of an expat in Moscow, Russia...
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The New Russian Business Leaders by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Stanislav Shekshnia, Konstantin Korotov, and Elizabeth Florent-Treacy.
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The contagious p23s5 meme that’s been floating around the blog community in the last few weeks is not quite as fun or interesting as its history. Laughing Meme and Brownpau both take a good stab at tracking down where it began and how it spread.
Though I haven’t had much extra time for reading lately, Aksenov’s The Burn is still hiding under a stack of neglected papers on my desk. Just for fun, here is the fifth sentence of the twenty-third page:
One hears these words of wisdom all one’s life, so by the age of forty one should have absorbed them.
If you feel so inclined, post the 5th sentence of the 23rd page of the book you’re reading in the comments. I’m curious to see what you all are reading. . .
Responses to “Page 23, sentence 5”
April 25th, 2004 at 2:59 am
Page 23, sentence 5, Moscow 2042 by Vladimir Voinovich:
I am very fond of the woods, mostly coniferous, that separate our village from the outskirts of Munich; they remind me of the woods around Moscow, with the difference that these are criss-crossed with asphalt and gravel paths, have signs at the intersections, and detailed maps along their edges.
April 26th, 2004 at 2:53 am
“Two days later, he recorded: ‘I wish to depart today for the island of Cuba, which I believe should be Cipango [Japan], according to the description that this people give me of its size and wealth…’”
-A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki
It’s for a class, but is one of the most amazing books I have read about American history from the perspective of America’s minority population.
April 23rd, 2004 at 3:51 am
From Americana, by Don DeLillo:
“Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth after lunch. I kept some toothpaste and a toothbrush in my office and always brushed my teeth after a lunch that included a few drinks. The washroom after lunch was always full of men brushing their teeth and gargling with mouthwash. There were times when I thought all of us at the network existed only on videotape. Our words and actions seemed to have a disturbingly elapsed quality. We had said and done all these things before and they had been frozen for a time, rolled up in little laboratory trays to await broadcast and rebroadcast when the proper time-slots became available. And there was the feeling that somebody’s deadly pinky might nudge a button and we would all be erased forever. Those moments in the washroom, with a dozen men sawing away at their teeth, were perhaps the worst times of all. We seemed to be no more than electronic signals and we moved through time and space with the stutter and shadowed insanity of a TV commercial.”