The return of Moopy Book Club (Sept/Oct): short stories & novella (2 for 1)

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Two for the price of one, from the Penguin 'great loves' series as selected by @RaspberrySwirl :

A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov

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When Gurov sees the lady with the little dog on a windswept promenade, he knows he must have her. But she is different from his other flings – he cannot forget her … Chekhov’s stories are of lost love, love at the wrong time and love that can never be.

United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love’s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love…
(from penguin.co.uk)

and

The Seducer's Diary by Søren Kierkegaard

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The Seducer's Diary records Johannes's discovery of a girl with the Shakespearean name Cordelia, whom he sets out to control. Intricately, meticulously, cunningly, the seduction proceeds. No detail is too small to escape Johannes.

"She sits on the sofa by the tea table and I sit on a chair at her side. This position has an intimate quality and at the same time a detaching dignity."

Less erotic than an intellectual depiction of seduction, Diary of a Seducer shows the casuist Kierkegaard in what he characterized as the aesthetic mode (from goodreads.com)
 
I want to do this one. And short stories are the perfect way to do so in that as much as anyone plans on reading everything, they (I) can at least try specific stories and add to the discussion on that basis.
 
I finished Russian Affair last week. It was a cute collection of love stories. Most of them rather clicked with me because I feel I’ve been in all these situations/positions.

I’ve started with A Seducer’s Diary. I haven’t been in the mood for reading that much, so it’s really going slowly, but my God, the writing is so so good. Every sentence is pure poetry.
 

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