Not long ago my Russian professor advised me to start reading some Russian novels, especially contemporary ones to be exposed to modern words, usage and ideas. “But I don’t know enough to understand yet!”, I protested. “Just read.”, she said. “Should I try to read without a dictionary at first, then read a second time looking up the words I don’t know (which felt like all of them)?”, I asked. “No, just read.”, she said. I thought she must greatly overestimate my progress. But I took her advice and started reading Азазель by Борис Акунин online on his website.
At first, of course, it was pretty frustrating, because I felt like it was just pointless reading stuff and not understanding it. But I decided to give it a week, reading one hour a day. I remember after a week I got an email from a friend in Latvia, and I was able to read it completely without a dictionary and it was the first time that had happened. And I didn’t know all the words in the letter. Usually I would’ve stopped reading as soon as I came across a new word, looked it up, put it in my flash cards to learn and then finally continued reading.
And I realized that when I first started reading novels in English, I certainly wasn’t familiar with every single word, but usually could understand the meaning through context. But I’d never given myself a chance to do that with Russian. My next goal is to train myself to do the same thing with listening. I find that as soon as someone says a word I’m not sure of, I get stuck thinking about it and end up missing the chance to get the overall context.
So — I thought I’d put together a list of sites I’ve found that have Russian novels, short stories, etc. I also recommend reading Russian news sites. It’s really interesting to read the Russian version of American news. :-) With the news sites, you see the same phrases over and over again (like “экономический кризис”) and that’s really helpful for learning.
Boris Akunin’s beautiful site: http://akunin.ru/ has the full text of many of his novels.
And while less (far less) beautiful, the site http://lib.ru has tons of stuff, like lots of stuff by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol (one of my favorites), Pushkin and much, much more. Certainly more than enough to keep me busy for quite a while.
http://learningrussian.net has a side-by-side Russian-English version of Anna Karenina, which is very instructive. The translation is the classic one done by Constance Garnett, so it’s good, but perhaps not quite as modern as the new translation done by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
The site http://conradish.net/ has a bunch of classic Russian literature in a very nice format where for many of the stories, a mouseover will show you the word in English and a mouseclick will give you a more complete description. Be forewarned — one of my Russian pen-pals told me that the translations aren’t always perfect. They do have Boris Pasternack’s Doctor Zhivago from 1957, so there’s a bit of modernity. They also have a section where they are experimenting in collaborative translation, so if you think you’d like to help, go check it out!
And for you poetry lovers, this site of classic Russian and Soviet poetry is quite interesting.
The Slavic Languages and Cultures Department in the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has a couple very nice examples of side-by-side Russian and English with the added bonus of sound files of the Russian being read. I like Alice in Wonderland and Winnie The Pooh. One of my projects is to memorize as much as possible of this Russian translation of Alice in Wonderland, imitating the wonderful Russian reader. Ok, so far I’ve only memorized the first line. But I’ve got it down cold. :-)
For news, I mostly read http://vesti.ru.
If you know of other good sites, please leave a comment!
Thank you for this website! I’m trying to teach myself Russian. I’m on dial up and have a very old computer. It’s a joy and treasure to find reading material. It’s one thing to memorize words, but quite another to bring them to life in news and story forms.
Your efforts are truly appreciated.
best regards, Bunni
Thank you, Bunni! That really means a lot.
Very nice to discover Akunin’s site because I was reading his novels from a book borrowed from my friend. Now I don’t have to borrow.
Regarding your professor’s advice, I should say that there are two types of reading: extensive and intensive. Different people prefer different types but both are useful. Extensive is when you just go after the plot of a novel, story, etc. The intensive is when you examine every single word, it’s translation, hidden meaning, etc. This is true for any literature, including the literature written in your native language.
ЗЫ — thanks for a link to our site :)
ЗЗЫ — ЗЫ=P.S. :))
Very nice to discover Akunin’s site because I was reading his novels from a book borrowed from my friend. Now I don’t have to borrow.
Regarding your professor’s advice, I should say that there are two types of reading: extensive and intensive. Different people prefer different types but both are useful. Extensive is when you just go after the plot of a novel, story, etc. The intensive is when you examine every single word, it’s translation, hidden meaning, etc. This is true for any literature, including the literature written in your native language.
ЗЫ — thanks for a link to our site :)
ЗЗЫ — ЗЫ=P.S. :))