<I>Extract 150</I>: top product of Ukrainian intellectuals

Extract 150 is the ninth book in The Day’s Library Series, another supplement to the Ukrainian passport, to quote The Day’s editor in chief Larysa Ivshyna. The reading and thinking Ukraine has amply confirmed this. The launching of our library’s new two-volume publication drew a capacity audience last Thursday at the Publishers’ Forum in Lviv. They came to meet The Day and our invaluable authors, as well as to touch — both mentally and physically — Extract 150, the elect of the elect.

The two-volume book Extract 150 was launched in the presence of The Day’s regular contributors, academics, and Ukrainian intellectuals, such as Volodymyr Panchenko, Oxana Pachliowska, Yevheniia Sokhatska, and Petro Kraliuk. The book includes selected texts written by these people, as well as materials by Ivan Dziuba, Serhii Krymsky, Lina Kostenko, Mykola Zhulynsky, James Mace, Yevhen Marchuk, Stanislav Kulchytsky, and other illustrious personalities of our time.

Well before the book’s launching, a lot of people lined up to buy Extract 150 early in the morning near The Day’s stall. Forum visitors purchased nearly all the new book sets we had brought to Lviv, which is only natural after all. For eight Ukraina Incognita books have gone to bookstores and university, school and private libraries all over Ukraine. They are being read and heeded. It is therefore small wonder that The Day’s new publication, in fact a true “extract” of ourselves, attracted a capacity crowd at Lviv’s theater Voskresinnia (“Resurrection”). This occurred even though, according to Kraliuk, the forum was concurrently launching a new book by this year’s forum star Jostein Gaarder.

Book lovers know that the first stage in getting acquainted with a book is an elementary sensory — visual or tactile — impression rather than a summary or an annotation. It was interesting to hear about the first impression that our publication made on Volodymyr Panchenko.

“To begin with, this book is very pleasant to touch. It is very nice to hold it in hand,” Panchenko said at the launching ceremony. “It is the elect of the elect. It is the most important, essential, telling, and characteristic of what Den’/The Day has created as an intellectual product in the past 12 years. This is a top product created by the current Ukrainian intellectuals.”