Books

Looking along a bookshelf full of grammar books at work today I had the following flashback:

Maksim, between twenty and twenty-five, is at Lyoshka's for a chat and a cup of tea after work. Lyoshka is in the kitchen, Maksim can hear cups and saucers rattling and a muffled (and unexpectedly rude) curse from Lyoshka as he drops a spoon.
Maksim is quietly humming a song that is stuck in his mind and looking at Lyoshka's bookshelf, a comparatively huge piece of furniture that fills almost the entire wall of Lyoshka's living room. He perceives the smell of lacquer, furniture polish and leather-bound books and notices that several of the books look a bit scuffed, but still very expensive with their leather or linen covers with golden letters on their backs. Most of them are Russian books, of course, but some are in German - Maksim thinks he can decipher the word "grammar". (My Russian friend has just confirmed that he must certainly have had German classes at school - not very many perhaps, and not very good ones, but there is a great chance that he learned enough just to read and write some German and perhaps say a few words.)
There could be a very old Latin grammar or dictionary as well, and there are many books about radio technology and electrical engineering and books with titles like "How to build your own radio".

When Maksim was a child he had the feeling that Lyoshka knew everything under the sun, that you could ask him any question and he would answer it - the selection of books in his bookshelf certainly seemed to confirm that!