Big Read: The Death of Ivan Ilyich  Tags: slavic literature  

Research the card game that Ivan Ilyich and his friends play. Describe a game that you and your friends play. How many hours per week do you spend on the game, what does it take you away from, what do you get out of it, how is it a distraction from what is important in life, according to Tolstoy? Use the novel to draw a conclusion about your game playing. What kind of comparison can you make? Archive your investigation

Research tips: Be sure to check the suggestions under "Searching for Tolstoy", "Google Books", "Another Approach", "Media", and "Biography and Bibliography" if you are having trouble getting started.

There are many sources available for games, even 19th century Russian card games. One of the standard rule books for card games was compiled by a man named Edmond Hoyle. There are many editions of the rule book (popularly referred to as "Hoyle") and all are different. Many different editions of Hoyle are freely available through Google Books. To find the full text of the entry on this game, use the "Advanced Book Search". Mark the "Full View" option under the search box. This will guarantee that your search returns only full text resources.

This search will return the pages from Hoyle relevant to just this game, giving you the basic description of how the game was played.

Now that you know how the game is played the question is what did Tolstoy think of games in general and card games in particular.

This is a little trickier simply because Tolstoy includes games in so much of his fiction. It is certainly possible to search some of the databases with archives of journals and newspapers for the terms "Tolstoy cards" or "Tolstoy games". If we want to stick with Google Books for the moment we will have to isolate Tolstoy's fiction from his other writings to get some idea of his personal opinion about games.

One approach you might try is to search for Tolstoy's diaries or journals in Google Books. Again, you will want to limit your search to full text.

Because there is so much by and about Tolstoy in Google and Google Books specificially, it is necessary to narrow the search as much as possible. It is also possible to find secondary literature on the topic by searching literary databases such as MLA.