Reading List: 6/21- 6/27

Currently:
Hippolytus (14% complete)
The Purloined Letter (50%)
The Secret Adversary (9%)

Just Finished:
The Pit and the Pendulum ***
The Sea Gull *** and a half*

I've been in love with Chekhov for years (ever since I read his short Peasants) but never read any of his plays until now (odd, since his plays are what he is primarily known for). I was able to read the play in one evening, in about two hours actually. It is a tragedy but I won't spoil the end. It is one of those little "glimpse into everyday Russia" that Chekhov is so known for. The story is pretty mundane on the surface (centered around a group of people, mostly of the artistic set, around a lake in the Russian countryside) but there is some depth under the surface. Tragic love, unfulfilled potential, wasted life, regret and duplicity are just some of the themes to the short play. I went into the play knowing absolutely nothing about it and was surprised to discover how Shakespearean is was (in a lot of ways it is like a Russian, modernist version of Hamlet) yet it still maintained all of Chekhov's hallmarks (which is what I fell in love with about his work) of a glimpse into the Russia that he knew and the fact that while his works seem trivial, they really aren't.

To Get:
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Books To Get

So I don't forget:

1. Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo (why doesn't DailyLit have this?! ClassicReader does though...)
2. Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara