Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book

Great value. I never progressed past beginner with Russian, and I still flip through this book from time to time. The stories are wonderful, so even just reading the English side is great. Exploring the footnotes can give you interesting little tidbits about culture, and it's actually kind of fun to compare differences in sentence structure between the two sides. The two versions are laid out well enough that you can quickly find the translation across the binding. If you want to test your comprehension (or maybe retention is a better word), there are short sets of quiz-like questions in the back for every story as well! They even included a short dictionary in the back of words that were not common enough to know off-hand, but used in the book. All around great purchase. Even if you are only armed with a recreational interest in Russian I think you could still get something out of this book (although maybe a straight English collection of the stories may be a little lighter), and not feel too bad about parting with the money for it. Really recommended!

This is a reprint of a book from a series of bilingual readers that that first came out under Bantam Publishers in the 1960's. It was out of print, then Dover did what it does best: It bought the rights to "Russian Stories" and made it available to a whole new generation of intermediate-to-advanced language learners. In line with the other books in the series, it presents the original text on the left side with a good translation into English on the right page. (One of its sister-books, "First German Reader," is how I initially made the jump from being a beginner to becoming eventually fluent in that language.) "Russian Stories" brings you selections from masters of Russian prose, such as Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, as well as more recent authors. It even gives the reader advice on which order in which to read the stories, starting from the easiest and progressing to more difficult texts. If you want to read real Russian literature--not simplified versions or textbook anecdotes--this is the place to begin.

This dual-language book is a great way to learn Russian, provided that you have an intermediate or better knowledge of the language. The story selection is also excellent.

I bought this book as part of my ongoing acquisition of the Russian language. The layout is excellent and typical of these types of book; the stories are well selected and entertaining, with a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical usage. But... Anyone wanting to use this book as a booster to their contemporary Russian language skills should bear in mind that a Russian person learning English would not be best served by heading for the library and taking down Dickens, Tennyson, and Gaskill. Languages shift, change, and evolve and today's spoken Russian is as different from that of Gogol as English in San Francisco is different from that of Thackerey. Arguably the English spoken in San Francisco is fairly nasty ("He was like, that was so totally awsome, and I was like, cool...") because it is imprecise and unfocused and in fact fails to convey much meaning; nevertheless a solid grounding in Henry James wouldn't prepare someone for a close encounter with the local natives of the Sunset District. Likewise, the stories here won't really help you much with contemporary Russian as spoken by a teenage girl in Peter or a xenophobic hoodie near Red Square. But as a pleasure in itself, this book is a gem and a worthwhile addition to the library of anyone who is just establishing a beach-head in the language.

Great book

The dictionary of terms is helpful and the footnotes add rich context to the stories. The translations are almost word-for-word literal, just as promised. It's surprising how much structure and meaning is retained despite this. I won't be at a level where I can easily comprehend the Russian side soon, but it's nice to familiarize myself with the stories for now.

The book is Ok.

I studied Russian in college and am looking for ways to brush up on my reading comprehension. I really enjoy this book because it has classic Russian short stories that I have not yet had the opportunity to read. Depending on how ambitious I am feeling, I can either read the English first then then review how it was written in Russian or I can read it in Russian first and review in English. By doing this, I have learned more about sentence construction and how to phrase figures of speech. To my knowledge, I think that the translations are accurate. Enjoy!