[mixonic]

I don't tend to read biz books, but recently I've read a ton of great Russian texts.

The Master & Margarita

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita

Goethe's Faust & the story of Pontius Pilate retold in 1930s Russia. Really, I mean really damn good. Very readable.

Books 1 & 2 of The Gulag Archipelago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

An expansive history of the Soviet prison camp system, almost a folk history.

Petersburg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_(novel)

Think Joyce writing about a revolutionary plot in the Petersburg of 1910-something, involving patricide and a time-bomb set for 24 hours from now. Yeah.

That and slowly working through Proust (book 5). I'm not sure if I really recommend it, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts from other smarty-pants HN people.

[yolesaber]

Petersburg is exactly what I wanted to read once school ends. All this CS and math work makes me want to just discorporate myself into a ridiculous, subjective work.

Which translation would you recommend?

Also, if you enjoyed the darker parts of The Master and Margarita, I highly recommend Blaise Cendras' Moravagine (http://www.amazon.com/Moravagine-York-Review-Books-Classics/...).

[mixonic]

This Maguire & Malmstad translation is what I read:

http://www.amazon.com/Petersburg-Andrei-Bely/dp/0253202191

And I found it pretty tolerable. The footnotes are in the back (I think?) which kind of stinks for your first read. Unless you're a serious student of Petersburg history, the footnotes are requisite for understanding half of the nuance. Bely is doing all these tricks shifting the geography of the city and playing off places and events, and that's lost to the modern reader without help. I'm eager to read it again without paying attention to the notes though.

I'll take a look at Moravagine, it looks great. It's in line after Volume 3 of Gulag A. and Orlando Figes's history of the Russian revolutions. I need more context for all this pre-WWI stuff!