Quarantine Bloglette: The Bet

While some people are watching The Contagion, which is tempting, but I've so far resisted, I'm trying to think of lesser-known stories I can read or watch that are befitting of this isolation.

Anton Chekhov wrote a short story called The Bet. It was in one of my earlier Russian textbooks, and I still periodically reread it. If you've never read it, I recommend you go on-line where you can fine both audio recordings (about 20 minutes) and text. I would love to have a discussion about this story. Please send me your thoughts and, with your permission, without using names, I'll write some of your comments and include some thoughts of my own in a future blog. (Please do this! I'm worried I'll run out of ideas as the weeks pass.)

I remember the first time I read the story The Last Leaf by O'Henry. True to his form (think the Gift of the Magi), Mr. O'Henry made me gasp at the end. It's a very popular story in the English language book club that Douglas and I run in Vladivostok. They love O'Henry (pronounced O'Genry by the Russian!) as well as Jack London.

Douglas is reading A Gentleman in Moscow which, in part, is about a man sentenced to house arrest in Moscow in 1922. Page after page, he finds something he has in common with this man. It's a timely book to read.

I leave you with a picture of Three Bears in a Pine Forest by Ivan Shishkin. It's a popular painting that was used on the wrapper of a chocolate bar. (Because bears love chocolate?)