Quote of the Week: Leo Tolstoy

I may not share my fellow Turkish-American Elif Batuman's love for Russian literature. Batuman, whom I've never met, is a respected nonfiction writer who has published many articles in "The New Yorker" and she wrote a brilliant 2010 memoir "The Possessed." While much of that book talks about long, famous Russian novels, Batuman also talks about spending time in Uzbekistan where she spent a considerable long time engrossing the fascinating, yet very remote country.

Of course, one of the novels that Batuman was examining was the epic 1869 work "War and Peace" from Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) which is 1,225 pages.

Here is Tolstoy's quote:

"Historians are life deaf people who go on answering questions that no one asks them."

SIDEBAR: When I saw the headline in "The Huffington Post" that "Man Survives 96 Minutes Without a Pulse," I thought they might be refering to Dick Cheney, but the man is in fact an unmplyed chef named Howard Snitzer from Goodhue, Minnesota.

SIDEBAR TWO: Earlier tonight, we had a chance to listen to the show "Progressive Torch and Twang," an alternative country/folk/Americana music show from Impact89-FM, the college station from Michigan State via the Internet. The show is extremely entertaining and amusing. Among the highlights on tonight's show was a song from Eddie Spaghetti, an alt country singer from Seattle, who sang a tune called "Jesus Never Lived on Mars." We can't imagine that one would ever hear it on a country music station in Lynchburg, Va.!