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.