100 Books Like Whiskey Priest

I took up this gigantic novel on the recommendation of a friend who recommended Grey Bees. I was skeptical that I would read much of it because it is about Russia during the Second World War. However, once I got into the book, I was blown away.

Grossman is a bigger artist with words than any painter. He had a deep insight into humanity, every aspect of it. The chapters are short, but the book is over 800 pages long. I wanted to stop, but each chapter presented such insights that it was impossible not to be in awe at his writing. The story includes descriptions of the battle of Stalingrad from both sides, family life, the plight of Jews, and much, much more. 

After reading this book, I feel that I have lived another lifetime. There is a lot of sadness, some comedy, and lots of horror and… show more.

I love this book because it presents the story of a man in a very complex situation. He lives in the area of the Ukrainian Donbas region that is occupied by Russians who took over the area by force. So, his freedom is limited.

The time period in the book is just before the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is a beekeeper and lives a very simple life. I like that the book takes you into his mind as he makes his way through the period covered by the story. Things that first seem good, after thinking, may be bad, and vice versa.

I felt that his thinking accurately relates to the process of how people think. It is a very gentle story, but so compelling that I wanted to apportion reading the book so that I could digest, understand and most of all enjoy the story. 

I love this book of poetry because there is no question that once you start reading it in Ukrainian or in English translation, you are aware that it is by a genius.

No person I know would have the knowledge of human relationships, national character, historical insight, and vocabulary to present such a forceful account of the Ukrainian culture, mind, and traditions. I felt that I learned much more about my own background than had I read libraries full of books, volumes of newspapers, or watched thousands of YouTube videos.

I had to stick with it many times, but the journey was well worth it. I felt that I was reading the Bible of Ukraine—but it explains the story of a people, pointing fingers where necessary. 

I love this book because its author presents the story of the protagonist in such a flip, offhand way that it reminds me a bit of JD Saliger’s Catcher in the Rye. There is dark humor, sarcasm, and total disregard of any possible opposing perspective—yet the main character struggles as a sort of Everyman.

This book also reminds me of Kennedy’s Confederacy of Dunces, parts are laugh aloud funny. I couldn’t help but go along with the joke. Underneath it all, however, is a lot of deep thought (and knowledge) about Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians.

Lots of history, or should I say anti-history. As I plowed through this short novel, I kept wondering how Motyl would top each chapter, only to find that his rampant ingenuity has no bounds. This one stuck with me!

Broken Stone delves into the complicated plight of ethnic Germans who lived in the Soviet Union before WWII and were persecuted by Stalin. This novel, based on the author’s family history, explores what happens when they escaped to Germany just in time for WWII. I love all of Gabriele Goldstone’s books because she delves into a part of WWII history that’s rarely told.

Soviet rule completely changed the relationship between Russia as the imperial metropole and Ukraine as a peripheral territory in the empire.

It was through Terry Martin’s classic that I first understood the enormous political implications of the Soviets’ intricate nationality policy that invested the state’s various ethnic groups with their own national educational and administrative institutions, all the while depriving them of the right to political self-determination.

Martin’s analysis is as sharp as his prose is crisp and his detailed understanding of the Bolsheviks’ political reasoning remains impressive over twenty years after the study’s publication.

When it first appeared, I reviewed this book for The Moscow Times and called it “the best account yet of the Soviet collapse.” Plokhy pays particular attention to how events in Ukraine during 1991 proved crucial to the final breakup of the USSR (“the last empire” of the title).

Moreover, Plokhy’s conclusions help to explain how the narratives about the collapse contributed to Russia’s aggression against its neighbor in the 2000s. Everything Plokhy writes is worth reading, including his Gates of Europe, Chernobyl, and The Russo-Ukrainian War (he is prolific), but The Last Empire’s details have remained with me: the fierce desire for independence Ukrainians expressed in 1991 has remained true ever since.

What strikes me most about this book is how prescient it is. Published in 2000, this assessment of the first few years of Ukrainian independence accurately flags that Russia never fully accepted it and explains why an independent Ukraine threatens Russia. The introduction provides an excellent, brief history of Ukraine. Later chapters focus on politics, economics, social and cultural issues, and foreign policy up to 1998. Dyczok, an academic, was an eyewitness to key historical events, reporting from Ukraine during its 1991 declaration of independence and after. I particularly recommend the chapter on Ukrainian-Russian relations. Although written long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of Ukraine, much in that chapter foreshadows these critical events and helps account for why what happened did.

Dual timeline narratives connect young people’s lives today with those of family members in the past.

This one contrasts the fear and isolation Matthew feels during the 2020 Covid lockdown with the terror experienced by his great grandmother living in Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine) during the Holodomor. The futile efforts of a relative who escaped to alert Americans to Soviet oppression and Ukrainians’ starvation raises important questions for budding journalists who seek to tell the truth in the face of pressure and propaganda.

Plokhy’s engaging and well-documented study provides an excellent overview of the entire history of Ukraine and the repeated story of invasion, war, and occupation by its neighbors Poland and especially Russia. In particular, it provides sharp analyses of the complex relations between Ukraine and Russia from the time of its Czars through Stalin, the post-Stalinist Kremlin leadership, and Putin, providing contemporary readers penetrating insights into the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The book depicts in dramatic detail and narrative the century-long struggles of Ukraine for sovereignty, its century-long oppression by its neighbors, the terrible mass starvation and murder it suffered from both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in World War II, and its eventual independence—threatened by Russia in the 21st century through the present. In the contemporary context, Plotky’s text provides an illuminating understanding of Ukraine and its conflicted and often tragic history.