What do Muscovites read? Muscovites tend to prefer books over magazines. However, how much and what types of books people read varies greatly.

Tatyana Yakovleva,
22, student
My favorite writer is Theodore Dreiser. Now I want to read his "Trilogy of Desire: The Financier, the Titan and the Stoic."

Tatyana Titomir,
27, hospital nurse
Usually I read several books at a time. Therefore, I would rather tell you the names of the books which are currently on my shelf: Henrie Lacorder "The Life of St. Dominique," Vladimir Nabokov’s "Lolita," Anton Chekhov’s collection, Alexander Pushkin’s "Yevgeny Onegin," Carlos Castaneda volumes 1-4, Jean Genet, and William Shakespeare’s "Hamlet." I’ve been reading those books recently. Speaking of my favorite writers, I would say Anton Chekhov, Carlos Castaneda and Garcia Lorca.

Andrei Gruzdev,
26, system administrator, police officer
I read mostly textbooks and manuals on computer science; I don’t have time to read fiction. I used to read Roger Zelazny and other foreign science-fiction novelists. I like books that deal with things that are far from the Earth and its realities.

Alina Sheinis,
21, theater administrator (incidentally holding a book)
My favorite writer is Milan Kundera. Right now, I’m reading novels by Stephan Zweig.

Jeffrey Sawyer,
41, gentleman at leisure
Generally speaking, I like to read classic novels. What’s my favorite book? Well, I’ll tell you for your readers to know. It is "The Adventures of Augie March" by Saul Bellow.

Antonina Bespalcheva,
19, student
My favorite writers are Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. As for Lermontov, I mostly like his prose and as for Dostoyevsky I often reread "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov." I usually don’t remember the "mass-consumption" books I read, but I do read them sometimes just to while away the time, when I travel, for example.

Natalia Kurashova,
23, PR and advertisement manager
My favorite writer is Erich Maria Remarque, and at the moment, I’m reading Takashi Murakami.

Nikita Smirnov,
16, secondary school student
I like classic science fiction, like Jules Verne’s "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." The book I hate the most is Leo Tolstoy’s "War and Piece." Yes, I read it. If I had not read it, it would not have been my most hated book ever.

Alexander Zabelin,
28, sales manager, designer
I mostly read books related to my work, i.e. technical books. I used to read detective stories, but got bored because I didn’t find inspiration or use in them. Now, if I read fiction, it’s usually a historical novel.

Galina Simova,
45, teacher, and Nadezhda Simova,
23, manager
We like to read classic novels by Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and poetry by Eduard Asadov and Vladimir Vysotsky. We don’t like anything from the recent popular writers, like Paolo Coelho, for example. We sometimes pick up some light reading too, like Darya Dontsova detective stories to kill time on the train.