And in my early twenties, I tripped out on Victor Pelevin's drug-addled, darkly funny Gen X novel Generation P (the P standing for pizdetz, or screwed). In my teen years, I explored intimidating stacks of classics by Dostoevsky and Bulgakov, and art books from the Hermitage Museum of my native Saint Petersburg. As a child, I delighted in Soviet-era picture books like Dyadya Fyodor, about a precocious boy who runs away from home to live with a dog and cat. With bellies full, we'd stroll down Balboa Street to Globus Books, the Russian bookstore that feels like a time capsule, with its Persian rugs, towering shelves of dusty tomes and a distinctive old-library scent. On Sundays, my family and I would get dressed up to attend Russian Orthodox church on Geary Street, buy olivier salad and pickled cabbage by the pound at New World Market and take in the aromas of pirozhki and other baked goods at Cinderella Bakery. Like many Russian immigrants who came to the Bay Area in the 1990s, my childhood was full of weekly pilgrimages to San Francisco's Richmond District.
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