I know I am in for a treat when my friend Soulmate Sarah puts a link on my facebook page and says "BOOKCLUB?" Sovietstan was such a book. We both have a love for the slightly more obscure European countries - I lean more eastern european and she leans a little more central Asian/south eastern european but this book had something for both of us. And even if you don't have a strange niche like Souldmate Sarah and I do, I still think this is a book you could enjoy! These countries are often punchlines, if thought about at all - and most Americans can't even find them on a map but they are intriguing enough to fill several books.The countries that the book covers are: Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Here's some interesting tidbits from the book:
- Even though we tend to lump all of the "-stan" countries together they are incredibly different from each other in so many ways (geographically, politically, economically). Turkmenistan is 80% dessert, Tajikistan is 90% mountains. Kazakhstan has become super wealthy due to oil, gas and minerals. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have dictatorships on par with North Korea but Kyrgyzstan people have deposed to presidents.So, let's not lump.
- Ashgabat in Turkmenistan has the most marble clad building per square kilometer in the world. (The people at Guinness say so).
- The losses that Kazakhstan had during WWII fighting as part of the Soviet Union were monstrous. 10% of the Kazakh population died in connection with "The Great Patriotic War" a loss comparable to Germany's.
- There are 1400 leftover Soviet nuclear warheads in Kazakhstan - making it one of the world's nuclear powers...which is...weird.
- At anytime between 1 and 2 million of Tajikistan's 8 million residents is in Russia working and sending the money back home. Not much work to be had in Tajikistan.
- Kyrgystan is the only post-Soviet country in Central Asia where a sitting president has stepped down of his own volition
There's also a chapter about bride kidnapping - which is awful and terrifying and messed me up for days.
This was a really interesting book that expanded my knowledge of this part of the world exponentially. Special shoutout to my local public library who didn't have this book and ordered it to have in the collection specifically for me :) All the heart eyes.
This book will have a special place in my reading history as the first book that I started and finished during quarantine! I might have to make a special shelf for that on my goodreads page :)
This books is large, more than 500 pages but chapters are shortish and self contained. They are also in chronological order so you could do some skipping around if you would like and it won't hinder you. It starts way way back in the day with the OG of doomed architectural projects - Tower of Babel and ends (almost) with the World Trade Center/One World Trade. (Hello all the feelings on that chapter). If you're like "Wesley, Im not a structural engineer - I don't care about i-beams and load bearing walls" I would say do not fret my friend, it is a book more focused on the historical than the logistical and engineeri..cal.
Here are a few of my favorite tidbits:
- The Russians took a bunch of artifacts from the excavation of Troy in Turkey at the end of World War II as trophies, you can find them in the Russian State Museum.
- So many interesting facts about the Library of Alexandria: if you were coming into the city and you had a book you had to immediatley report to the library and if they didn't already have that book you had to hand it over. They would copy it and you would get the copy back and they would keep the original. Which is such a hard librarian flex. I hate it but respect it haha.You gotta have a plan if you want a copy of every book ever made, right?
-Did you know that a "milestone" is a symbolic central point of a city from which all of the distances within the city is measure from? Like if I was like "how far is it from Rome to Florence?" the distance is measured from their milestones.
-St Paul's Cathedral is the first English cathedral to be completed within the lifetime of it's original designer
-The guy who designed the Bastille in Paris was it's first prisoner - accused of, among other things, sexual acts with a Jewish woman
-There's a whole chapter on Panopticon prisons and it's bananas
-If you look at Berlin from space you can still see the divide where the Wall was - some will say it's because of the different street lamp lights, some will say it's because of standing economic differences #probsboth.
I really liked this book, it was a good friend during a weird time. 4 out of 5 stars!
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - I can see why so many people like this book. 80s nostalgia, a likeable protagonist, big faceless corporations are the bad guys, good world building. I also thought I was the only person who ever saw Ladyhawke, a personal favorite, until this book so #solidarity.
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu - This is a great little short story collection, with the connector between them all being something of the Asian variety. Set in Japan, a Japanese spaceship, an Asian folktale, Asian mobsters, etc etc. The titular story had me with tears in my eyes, eating my lunch at work. I want a paper menagerie to play with!
Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach - Interesting setting, ok plot, underwhelmed by character development which made it hard to get invested in the characters.
The Pyschopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson - If I had been more on the ball this one would have gotten full review, but I had to get it back to the library before I got around to writing the review. Whoops! I LOVED this book, and I can't wait to find more books by this author. It scratches that Mary Roach itch for me :)
The Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature's Greatest Monsters by Andrew McConnell Stott - This book was too much "oh my gosh, these people are ridiculous and make all of these problems for themselves while hurting everyone around them. Gosh, are they awful" and less "so, you want to hear about "Frankenstein"? Though I did pick up some tips on how to be an efficient grave robber, so that's helpful. If you are looking for a book with scandal and intrigue, this may be the book for you!
