Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

This thread is for the buddy read of The Siege by Helen Dunmore, which will begin on January 1, 2022.

I will join this, but maybe not by January 1.

I will be joining in, Sara. I'll be picking up a copy at my local library tomorrow. Looking forward to it!

I found a copy at my library as well! Of course I'll join in!

I’ve been meaning to read this, so I’ll join too

I just got the book from the library today, but have five other books to read first.

I read this earlier this year, and I'd say you're in for a treat but that isn't the right word. It's powerful though, and I'll be following your thoughts.

Looks like we will have a great group of readers for this one?

I'm stoked. I have had this book languishing for years now!

I will do my best to join this one, Sara! Have 3 books I have committed to with my personal book groups and not one short book amongst them. But I really want to read this one.

I hope you can, Antoinette, but I know all about having commitments to too many long books!

I noticed how many descriptions of food were present in the first few chapters. Anna is gardening in the sun, and giving lessons in exchange for honey and cheese. She's building up the food stores in anticipation of winter shortages. She stands in line after work to obtain milk for her brother. Her father and brother fish for trout, and you can almost taste the trout as you read the description. The author seems to be setting us up for the contrast will come later. (The cover discusses the situation in Leningrad so it's not a spoiler.)

I'm beginning this today. Connie, your post has made me hungry, better go start my black-eyed peas, collards and cornbread. :o)

That sounds like real Southern cooking, Sara. I didn't want to put the book down to cook our dinner tonight.

Supposed to bring good luck to eat on New Year's and, seriously, I can use all the good luck I can get right now. :0)

Through Chapter 4: (view spoiler)[I am already engaged with Anna and wondering about her father's relationship with Marina. As awful as life under Stalin was, with people so afraid all the time and disappearing at the drop of a hat, it is hard to think how much more difficult their lives can be when they are under siege. I am glad we are getting a sense of who they are before the war takes them over. (hide spoiler)]

I got my copy from the library and will begin tomorrow.

I get my library copy on the 3rd. I will start then. Looking forward.

Sara wrote: "I'm beginning this today. Connie, your post has made me hungry, better go start my black-eyed peas, collards and cornbread. :o)"

That sounds SOOOO good, Sara! I really miss eating the traditional southern New Year's Day meal. When I lived "up north" (north Louisiana), that's what we would eat. Here in south Louisiana, I have to fix gumbo, rice and potato salad. Just doesn't feel right without the good luck dishes. I'm living on the edge now. LOL

lol. You need to introduce those Louisianans to a new old tradition, Shirley. We had the leftovers today...wonder if that will give us double luck. :o)

Chapters 5-8: (view spoiler)["If she'd only known at the time how important every detail of that evening was going to become." That sentence really struck me. How often in life do we not know this is the last day for something, or the first day of something, or something that will change everything going forward. It all seems so ordinary, like any other day, and then BAM.

I thought about my sister losing her husband, John. She left him that morning to go to work and remembers that she snapped at him about something trivial. He had a heart attack while fixing their dinner and when she came in from work he was dead on the kitchen floor.

One of the details she mentions when they are working on the trenches, before Katya is killed, is how quickly she passed from one reality, which would have made all this incomprehensible, to another reality in which terror is almost commonplace. Katya's death seemed so senseless and sad, but almost destined, because she was so unsuited to survival.

And, Marina is still a mystery for me. Why does she talk about Vera as she does? Did she have an affair with the husband and get caught? Was she Vera's friend before she was his, or the other way around? I like the way this hangs out there awaiting an explanation. (hide spoiler)]

Chapters 6-11: (view spoiler)[Hard to imagine being faced with either sending your child away and risking them being killed in a bombed train or having them stay in the city and being killed in bombing there. I have always been aware of the evacuation of English children to the countryside, but I had not even thought about the Russians needing to do the same. What a hostile environment to be sending your small child away to with winter coming on.

I felt for Anna feeling she was faced with a Catch-22, especially regarding Kolya.

I know Andrei has not returned, but I can imagine he has his hands full at the hospital. Anna is wrong in thinking he is not also thinking of her. What a difficult thing to be starting out a relationship in the midst of so much loss and chaos. (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 8 Marina: (view spoiler)[ Marina came to their apartment with money, and calorie-intense foods like honey and jam. At first, Anna thought that Marina would be added responsibility for her, another person to take care of. But Marina surprised me by entertaining Kolya which allowed Anna to work for a while, and later stand in the bread lines without the burden of a child. Marina also gave up some of her food for Kolya, and later helped with Anna's father. I would think it would be very difficult for Anna to accept Marina since she suspected that she had an affair with her father, but she is not acting like a spoiled actress. Marina realizes that they are in for a terrible winter.

Anna, Andrei, and Marina are working together to keep Kolya alive while they live on starvation rations, and curl up with him under blankets to keep him warm. They seem to be forming a little family together as time goes on. (hide spoiler)]

Katya: (view spoiler)[ I agree that Katya was destined to die. She did not seem aware of danger or used to physical work. She didn't have the right mindset or physical strength. Maybe her family would have had enough money to purchase food on the black market. If not, maybe it's better to die in an instant rather than starving slowly to death.

Anna and Evgenia are planners and survivors. They are also very unselfish and helpful to the people they love. (hide spoiler)]

Connie: Marina & Katya (view spoiler)[She is an interesting character. I liked her even when Anna was trying to draw the portrait. She seems savvy and thoughtful, and she is exactly what Anna needs to survive what is coming. It would just be too difficult to do it alone, especially with her father now being someone who needs care instead of someone who can help give it.

I agree Katya is better off perishing instantly than a lingering death of starvation. Many would hope to die before this siege was over. Evgenia is another interesting personality. They put her down for being a "country girl", but it is exactly that quality in her that will insure she can survive. The more pampered your lifestyle, the harder this kind of crisis would be for you.

Having Andrei around, a person with medical knowledge, would also be an advantage. And then there is just fate. Sometimes it is just right place at the right time that saves you. I have just read the section where Anna goes back to the dacha to get the potatoes. There is an element of luck that gets her through the checkpoint and back into the city safe, and that would be the case in reality. Some will be unlucky enough to be standing under the wall when it falls, like Katya, others will escape a bombing/striffing that kills 6 other women. Sometimes survival is determination and sometimes it is inexplicable. (hide spoiler)]

OMG, I could quote and quote from the section I am reading now. I think my pre-COVID understanding of this book and my post-COVID are quite different. I can see the possibility of this, the danger of living in a city, the specter of a cut supply chain.

Sara wrote: "Chapters 5-8: "(view spoiler)[If she'd only known at the time how important every detail of that evening was going to become." That sentence really struck me. How often in life do we not know this is the last day..." (hide spoiler)]

(view spoiler)[Oh, how tragic for your sister, Sara! I am so sorry. We all experience times we wish we could take back, but unfortunately, sometimes we're just not given that chance. I remember, many years ago, when a friend of mine lost her son to suicide. I've never forgotten what the minister said at his funeral because he spoke the most comforting words I have ever heard: "God doesn't look at just the last moment of a person's life... He looks at the person's entire life." That man deserves a blessed life for providing so much comfort to a family who will never know the "why." (hide spoiler)]

In your remarks about Katya, I agree with you at how quickly the human spirit must adapt in order to survive. (view spoiler)[Katya just did not have it. But I am surprised that she was summoned to work alongside the other women. She came from a privileged Soviet family, which normally were exempt from things like this. (hide spoiler)]

Shirley (view spoiler)[Thank you for sharing about your friend's son. Suicide can be so devastating to those left behind. It is wonderful that the pastor knew the right thing to say. At least for my sister it wasn't a true row, just not a loving goodbye that she wished she had given.

I think the difference between what we are seeing in Leningrad in the novel is that the circumstances are so dire so quickly that no one is exempt. Even the social order is being turned on its head. (hide spoiler)]

I am completely taken into this book now. It is so easy to draw parallels that wouldn't have been there just a few years ago.

Sara wrote: "OMG, I could quote and quote from the section I am reading now. I think my pre-COVID understanding of this book and my post-COVID are quite different. I can see the possibility of this, the danger ..."

I agree, Sara. I was discussing this book with my husband yesterday and telling him how hard city dwellers had it because they were used to being fed by the provinces (our farmlands). To them, milk came from stores, not cows. They had no concept of the supply chain. My husband said that his mother's family were really better off than the city people during the Great Depression because they grew everything they ate or bought what they needed by selling what they produced. I pray we never have to go back to that, because people nowadays are very ill prepared for that way of living.

I could quote and quote, as well. I particularly made a note of these thoughts in Chapter 15 because it reminds me how quickly a culture can change before we're even aware of it.

..."Everything becomes normal so quickly, until you look back and see how far you've come away from how things used to be... I keep thinking, how did we get to where we are? Nobody wants it, so how did it ever happen? I look back, and I just can't see how we got here."

I was thinking that even when my father was alive he always had a garden in our backyard. He was raised on a farm, and he had seven children, so food you didn't have to buy was needed, but I think it was also a hangover from WWII when everyone was encouraged to grow what they could. He had a nice garden on a very small piece of land, and the output was canned and put away for the winter. I wouldn't even know how to begin to do that and my grandchildren would be astounded that it was even a possibility. We are, as you say, ill prepared.

Connie wrote: "Chapter 8 Marina: (view spoiler)[Marina came to their apartment with money, and calorie-intense foods like honey and jam. At first, Anna thought that Marina would be added responsibility for her, another person ..." (hide spoiler)]

(view spoiler)[I agree with you, Connie. Marina turned out to be such a surprise to me as well. Where I thought she would be a pampered actress, she really turned out to be a resilient, down-to-earth person who was really instrumental in helping Anna and her family. I really liked her - and Evgenia as well. (hide spoiler)]

Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "I could quote and quote, as well. I particularly made a note of these thoughts in Chapter 15 because it reminds me how quickly a culture can change before we're even aware of it. ..."Everything bec..."

And isn't that kind of how we feel about the changes we see in our own world today? Even things like the change from kids coming home from school, grabbing their bikes, and heading out to play to having kids cowering in front of TVs or only allowed out for organized sports because parents are afraid of things like abduction. How do we get from one place to the other so fast?

There is a term that keeps referring to one of the characters in the book. The term is Stakhanovite. I finally looked it up and read this in Wikipedia:

The term Stakhanovite (стахановец) originated in the Soviet Union and referred to workers who modeled themselves after Alexey Stakhanov. These workers took pride in their ability to produce more than was required, by working harder and more efficiently, thus strengthening the socialist state.

What really caught my eye in the Wikipedia article is how George Orwell had a representation of the Stakhanovites in the character of Boxer the Horse in Animal Farm, whose motto was "I will work harder!" When I read that, I almost cried because I remembered how much his character affected me in that story.

Sara wrote: "Shirley Thank you for sharing about your friend's son. Suicide can be so devastating to those left behind. It is wonderful that the pastor knew the right thing to say. At least for my sister it was..."

I agree, Sara! We really don't know how close we are to some of the conditions in this book. Just in the past 6 years, our area has experienced empty shelves and short supplies of what we would call essentials (the Great Flood of 2016, COVID-19 in 2020, and Hurricane Ida in 2021). In all three situations, we were all dependent on more supplies being trucked in. It changes people.

And can I just say I MUST read Pushkin soon. Dunmore keeps quoting him in the book (on the back flyleaf, she actually says she translated his work into English herself!). The quotations grab my heart! Has anyone read Pushkin... if so, which work would you recommend?

I have also stopped several times to research terms and references. Thanks for this one. I would have entirely missed the Orwell connection.

Early on there is a reference to the "Decembrist Wives". I got sidelined for a couple of hours reading about them and checking out the statue that has been built to them. Very interesting. I realize that the only periods in which I am even remotely versed in Russian history are the WW1 and last Tsar periods and the cold war era.

Sara wrote: "I was thinking that even when my father was alive he always had a garden in our backyard. He was raised on a farm, and he had seven children, so food you didn't have to buy was needed, but I think ..."

Canning and raising chickens are very prevalent in my (rural) area. A lot of these back-to-basics backyard farmers are actually millennials, which is a great thing to see.

Sara wrote: "Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "I could quote and quote, as well. I particularly made a note of these thoughts in Chapter 15 because it reminds me how quickly a culture can change before we're even ..."

Oh, I agree, Sara! I was raised, and I raised my kids to just go out and have fun after school... "just be home before dark" was the only admonition. Those activities taught children to use their imagination and a degree of self-reliance and discipline. The various parents *were* the Neighborhood Watch, and the kids knew it.

Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "Sara wrote: "I was thinking that even when my father was alive he always had a garden in our backyard. He was raised on a farm, and he had seven children, so food you didn't have to buy was needed,..."

I am very happy to hear this. I lived in a very rural area before we moved back to the city to be close to medical care needed for my husband. I think it would be a much better place to be if the food supply were in trouble. There were small farms all around us. I, however, had no personal luck raising food (the groundhogs got most of it) and I don't remember enough about canning to think I could do it safely.

Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "Sara wrote: "Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "I could quote and quote, as well. I particularly made a note of these thoughts in Chapter 15 because it reminds me how quickly a culture can change befor..."

Exactly how it was for us. There was a community of people watching out for the children. Sadly, neighbors hardly know one another now, especially with both parents generally working and kids in day care until dark.

Sara wrote: "I have also stopped several times to research terms and references. Thanks for this one. I would have entirely missed the Orwell connection.

Early on there is a reference to the "Decembrist Wives..."

I missed that one, Sara. Thank you. I will go look up "Decembrist Wives."

I have read a lot of Russian history from the last Tsarist regime through the first years of the Soviets. And I have read most of Alexander Solzhenitsyn books. I have always intended to read about the "Russian front", as this was always the threat the German soldiers heard if they misbehaved (at least in the WWII movies I have watched). But until now, I didn't know what the German soldiers were doing on "the eastern front". Some of this reminds me of War and Peace. I don't know what the fascination is in marching across the frozen tundra of Russia to fight an enemy who is used to that environment!

After reading The Siege, I may go ahead and read one of the non-fiction books Dunmore mentions in her bibliography and fulfill Bob's Challenge #9: Fiction/Non-Fiction.

Sara wrote: "Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "Sara wrote: "I was thinking that even when my father was alive he always had a garden in our backyard. He was raised on a farm, and he had seven children, so food you..."

Canning IS a lot of work. I did it for a while, but I realized I could buy produce cheaper than I could plant it, fertilize it, pesticide it, water it, harvest it, and can it. LOL. But for a while, I did still enjoy putting up mayhaw and muscadine jelly and fig preserves. Yum!

I have it on my list for a fiction/non-fiction pairing too. It seems a natural choice. I always heard it said that the Germans should have learned from Napoleon's experience. Of course, those stranded inside Leningrad had no way of knowing how bad it was for the Germans outside their city.

Sara wrote: "I have it on my list for a fiction/non-fiction pairing too. It seems a natural choice. I always heard it said that the Germans should have learned from Napoleon's experience. Of course, those stran..."

I hadn't thought of that (the Leningraders wondering how the Germans were faring)... but I don't think they had much sympathy for them.

I came across a book a couple of days ago that looked at the siege from both sides (the Soviet and the German side). It looked great (got solid reviews), but I can't put my fingers on it again. Drats!

If you're interested, Sara... I finally found the book on Leningrad I was looking for. Dunmore did list it in her bibliography. It is The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison E. Salisbury. It sounds fascinating.

Ive got this from the library and should start in the next couple of days. Looks like a good discussion already.

I can’t wait to join you all, but I have to get through my book club book first!

Here below is a cloud link to a photo of my city backyard garden from earlier this year. I hope this works because I couldn’t figure out how to copy paste into this post.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/007Yb...

I wouldn’t say that my approach is super economical but it is organic. Since I still work, I don’t really have time to can things and garden too, but I have canned things in the past —tomatoes, pickles, jams, etc. — the easy stuff. One year I made orange marmalade from store bought oranges and it was much better than anything I have ever bought at a store.

My mother and maternal grandmother always had vegetable gardens and they both canned fruits and vegetables. My grandmother always had home canned fruits like peaches and apricots. They had more time in their lives and I am sure that the way they did it was economically beneficial. You only need to go back one generation in my family to get to the times when chicken didn’t come pre-packaged in plastic. People had chickens for eggs and for eating.

Terry wrote: "I can’t wait to join you all, but I have to get through my book club book first!

Here below is a cloud link to a photo of my city backyard garden from earlier this year. I hope this works because ..."

So good to hear from you, Terry. I'm glad you'll be joining in on the discussion.

I love your garden! Those elevated boxes are beautiful. I know you must be proud of it all. And yes, fresh produce and meat just taste so fresh and different from packaged foods!

What a lovely garden, Terry! It's such a good mix of flowers and vegetables.