50 book challenge: #45, #45.5

#45: Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita. There are some books that you feel obligated to pick up and read because of their status as classics, but which you have been avoiding because you fear they will be dull dull dull. Then, without even getting past the first page you realize that instead the book justifies all the sort of adjectives that are maybe more commonly used for popular literature: a page-turner, unputdownable, laugh-out-loud funny, etc.

For me, War and Peace was like that. The three worst words in the book are its title. They're just so ponderous and vague, which is utterly unlike the actual text and action of the novel, even the more philosophical portions. (Tolstoy should have stuck with his original title, 1805.) Anyway, The Master and Margarita, while not really comparable to War and Peace, was similar. There must be some superficial quality of classic Russian novels that intimidates me, but it's not like I'm reading them in the original language. . . But in fact the Russian novelists that I've read - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov if you include him on the basis of this novel - in fact have a reliably playful quality to them.

So in The Master and Margarita, the devil visits Moscow and wreaks havoc on the city's population. Interpolated are chapters on Pontius Pilate's role in the trial and crucifixion of a man named Yeshua ha-notsri, as related by Satan but also in chapters of a book written by another character known as "the master." Oh, and have I mentioned the trigger-happy black cat the size of a hog, who stands on two feet and knocks back shots of vodka? By the way, prospective readers should note that Jimmy Buffett has nothing to do with the story.

#45.5: James Kugel, How to Read the Bible. Begin at the beginning, continue to the end, then stop. This is a fascinating reference book, but I wasn't about to read it straight through. So I figure I'd treat the portions I did read as about half a book.