Getting into the Bind. Selected Places from the Home Library

THIS MATERIAL WAS PRODUCED BY A FOREIGN AGENT ANDREY KOLESNIKOV, OR THE MATERIAL RELATES TO THE ACTIVITIES OF THIS FOREIGN AGENT. Andrey Kolesnikov is a journalist and political analyst, author of several books, including the memoir titled "House on Old Square." He is a recipient of several professional awards, including the Yegor Gaidar Prize 2021 "for outstanding contribution to the field of history." According to Borges, a library is the Universe. And a home library is the universe of one family. It surrounds like a forest. Inside this forest, under the bark of book-trees, life goes on, secrets are hidden—notes, drawings, trolleybus tickets, receipts for long-lost clothing items. Books, marked with the notes of several generations, volumes used for writing school essays by both great-grandmother and great-grandson. The smells of books are multilayered, sweetish, and the tactile sensations from the covers are the recognition of home, the memory of family. The spines of collected works guard against a hostile world. Dark green volumes of Dickens and Chekhov, green Gogol and Turgenev, dark red Dreiser and Feuchtwanger, dark blue Jules Verne and orange Mayne Reid stand in rows and hold the line. Life goes on…