I didn't quite feel this landed either the fashion memoir or reflection on life in Putin's Russia (perhaps because it assumed some knowledge of Russia at the time) but it had fun snippets and was an interesting, if less personal, read.

I read Jonathan Weisman's (((Semitism))) late last year and, while I really enjoyed what Weisman had to say and how he said it, I didn't rate it. I wasn't sure if my statistical input was needed - or helpful - for a book about which I have no first-person, personal, emotional knowledge. There are some books which I just don't need to weigh in on in such a way, unless, in this particular instance, actual Jewish people tell me that, hey, that's cool, rate away.

Though it's more a matter of practical knowledge and fact-checking (or lack thereof), this is why I'm not rating Dressed Up For a Riot. I just know so very little - nothing, practically speaking - about the subject, i.e. upper-class-ish Putin-opposition-ish Russian culture from 2012-2014. I really, REALLY enjoyed the book, more than I typically enjoy this kind of nonfic (sort of creative nonfic, sort of memoir, sort of journalism? Is there a term for it?). Idov's laconic yet bashful self-deprecation was more charming than it had a right to be - ugh, self-deprecation in memoirs, ugh - and the balance of personal and historical record was nicely done. There was pathos when there needed to be pathos, irony when there needed to be irony, and f-bombs when there needed to be f-bombs.

Still not gonna rate it, though, because my enjoyment of a book counts absolutely nothing to how accurate it is, how honest, how true. I've read a few other negative reviews mentioning that it's just a story about rich Russians and a supremely lucky expat being apathetic, but that wasn't, I feel, a problem, because Idov never once made a case that he was Everyman speaking for every man. He was in a privileged and bizarre situation and he goofed up a lot.

At least, that's how the book goes. What do I know? I don't. I enjoyed it but as a Schrödinger's cat: both fiction and nonfiction, true and false, simultaneously. No rating.

Very interesting and humorous perspective on relatively recent events in Russia

not how i thought/wanted. bleh.

I don't remember how I got this book but it makes me crave reading some Gogol stories.

This memoir of the former Russian GQ editor starts strong and really loses momentum 2/3 of the way through. There’s not much narrative thread aside from “I did this, then I did this, then this happened, so I did this...” etc. Names are dropped constantly with little explanation; sometimes they return and other times they don’t, so I barely understood who was who in a given moment. At the same time, Idov does offer some interesting perspectives on how Russian society, especially media, works. Wouldn’t recommend unless you have some background knowledge on Putin-era Russia.

Maybe like a 2.7, 2.8?

What worked: The most interesting thing I learned from this book is the way cynicism and apathy pervades certain segments of Russian society that *could* be mobilized to resist autocracy. This is how democracy fails (or fails to start): people don't care enough to protest, or think it's futile, or are content to take their material comforts and shut up.

What didn't work: For someone without much of a background on Russian politics, I was lost for much of the book. Name after name flew by without me having the context to understand who was who. It probably took until about 100 pages in that the story moved beyond background and into interesting parts of Idov's experience in Russia.

My greatest criticism of the book, though, was that I didn't take away any major point about Russia other than the author isn't sure how to feel about it, either. The author and his family move away from Russia but he feels...somewhat more Russian? Or at least less American? after the experience. I know that real-life narratives don't sum up neatly, but I wanted there to be a *point* to all of this, a truth about the world or about Russia that this book illuminated. But there was none. And so I am left disappointed.