
A Love Letter to Concrete - smacktoward
http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/love-letter-concrete/
======
smacktoward
If you're interested in tracking down copies of _A Russian Course_ , it
appears to still be in print via Slavica Publishers at Indiana University:
[https://slavica.indiana.edu/bookListings/textbooks/A_Russian...](https://slavica.indiana.edu/bookListings/textbooks/A_Russian_Course_Part_1)

And the recorded audio material that used to be distributed on tapes with the
books can be purchased in MP3 format from Boston University's Geddes Language
Center:
[http://www.bu.edu/geddes/services/](http://www.bu.edu/geddes/services/)

~~~
gnode
I'd already bought myself a copy. :) Having been learning Russian for a few
years, it sounds like an interesting read.

~~~
smacktoward
I know absolutely no Russian, but reading about this book makes me want to
learn it!

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ggm
"A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" has a lot of concrete in it. Love of
the tool, acceptance of doing the best job you can, the pains of using
concrete in a cold climate. Solzhenitsyn probably knew what he was talking
about.

If you are trying to build a new society, the word "build" isn't co-
incidental.

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fcbrooklyn
They talk about Concrete City as if it's satire, but when I read the title, I
assumed it would have something to do with Concrete, Washington. A real place,
named after the substance, and immortalized in This Boy's Life, by Tobias
Wolff.

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cafard
There is a Russian novel, I guess a monument of socialist realism, called
_Concrete_. I bought an English translation, but somehow never got up the
energy to read it.

