Public reader discussion about A Hero of Our Time in the WeRead Catalog by Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov.
By prologue_chaffer1978
Pechorin from *A Hero of Our Time* by Lermontov has basically always been one of my favorite protagonists. What other books have leads that feel similar? P.S. If anyone brings up Edward Cullen, I’m gonna flip out.
By verseWatches28
I kind of wish it was from Russian lit instead, maybe optional though.
By BronzeRaven9101
I’m kind of craving another book with a character as gripping as Pechorin, but I’ve already read *A Hero of Our Time* way too many times to jump back into it again. Any recommendations for novels where the main character pulls at your emotions/thoughts like he does? And yeah, you can totally talk about Pechorin too—I don’t think I’d ever get bored analyzing him. My take is that he’s somehow both really gross and also kind of sad in an endearing way. I’m torn between loving him and hating him, but I mostly just relate to that cold, hopeless apathy he has—too much of it shows up in me and other people, so I can’t really blame him for it.
By looksbridge
I was on a plane once, chatting with a woman who grew up in Paris, and I asked what she had to read in high school. She actually gave me a list: - *Bel-Ami* by Guy de Maupassant - *Germinal* and *L’Assommoir* by Émile Zola - *Les Misérables* by Victor Hugo I’m in Ontario, Canada. Over the last ten years or so, our curriculum seems like it went wide open, so teachers can basically pick whatever. I remember *The Kite Runner* by Khaled Hosseini getting popular for a bit, and *Three Day Road* by Joseph Boyden too. But if we’re talking back to my high school days in the late 90s, I’d guess most of my class ended up reading stuff like: - *Lord of the Flies* - *1984* - *Macbeth* - “Harrison Bergeron” (Kurt Vonnegut Jr.) Curious though—where is everyone else from, and what were the most common things you had to read in high school?
By dustyhare
Pretty much everyone with a brain knows corporations are usually full of it.
By SwiftCell2965
This Sunday the 29th we’re supposed to talk about Houellebecq’s *Submission*. In the meantime, I’m wondering if anyone’s reading a Russian book right now—drop what you’re on, please. Also, we’re back with the Cossacks again for a third year, and this time it’s “in the present,” which is kinda funny/odd. The Lermontov bit is pretty intense: he was an officer in a Hussar regiment and wrote *A Hero of Our Time* back in 1839, not long after Pushkin died, and then not too long before Lermontov himself got killed in a duel. I’m not 100% sure how the whole duel situation “worked out” exactly, but the basic story is that Martynov challenged him and ended up shooting first, and Lermontov supposedly told people he’d shoot into the air. Then of course he got hit. Anyway, *A Hero of Our Time* is basically a five-part thing about Pechorin—fearless, kind of womanizing, and always moving like he’s bored of everything. The stories feel a bit like American Western vibes, but with way more melodrama and an ironic narrator looking sideways at everything. I did like some of the set-ups, especially *Bela* and *Princess Mary*. *Taman* is probably my favorite because it’s got that seaside atmosphere and it almost feels lighter than the rest, even though stuff is still going wrong. Pechorin just keeps doing whatever, and everyone around him is left wondering what he even thinks of them. He’s got that whole Byronic/creepy-cool vibe too, which is… a lot. I’ve read enough Lermontov to sort of get the tone, but I’d still love to know what other people think of him—like, do you like him, find him annoying, or somewhere in between?