Actually it was Christmas present for mystery person. And it's still. So I'm wondering who will be this person.
Also I should have chosen a book with easier Russian but I could always help with some reading difficulties.

Огромное спасибо за рождественский подарок, который я получила вчера :-) Я (очень плохо говорящая по-русски) хотела бы читать книгу и что-нибудь понять, но сперва мне нужно найти русско-финский словарь!

I did Russian at school, but it's been years and I haven't had virtually any practice since--I'm rusty beyond belief! Anyway, I have my good old "Majak" textbooks and grammars ready and I'm anxious to start reading; will probably resort to online dictionaries for the most obscure words.

I got the book from cazfi who obviously feels the same way: I do need to revise my Russian :-)

Well, it's been ten years.

And absolutely no Russian practice.

I finally found the courage yesterday to start reading this, and once I got going I realized it's not at all as bad or daunting as it seemed. It's funny really how the most obsolete words (old-times clothing materials and accessories! pince-nez's and monogrammes!) are immediately familiar and recognizable even though I now meet them in Russian for the very first time, because they are almost identical in Finnish. Then again, I'm having a bit of a struggle with the plot because I'm obviously missing much, stretching to the very limit of my knowledge of Russian... but I'm reading on anyway and hoping to finish this book in the near future :-D

I think I'll have to look for more books in the Erast Fandorin series after I'm done with this one.