If you dream of reading Russian literature in the original, how do you get from the language of the textbook to the language of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky? Tom Besinger, who spent a year building a glossed reading room for the Russian classics, recommends five books for learning Russian, focusing on the difficult middle ground between finishing a textbook and being able to read confidently in the language. He also explains why the advice normally given—to start with something short—is wrong.
