Deborah Hoffman May 31, 2010:

ignore my previous comment I've looked at some of the other questions, and I'm really curious as to what type of book this is and from what era.

Deborah Hoffman May 31, 2010:

* shtark means strong in Yiddish, heard rarely in English in that sense. Among the (jewish) orthodox community you will hear shtark also to refer to orthodox who are particularly strict, again a rare usage. Or this could be completely off-base, without context it's hard to tell :-)

Tatyana Leshkevich May 31, 2010:

Похоже, что всё дело в books, а не в women. Расширьте, пожалуйста, контекст. О каких книгах речь?

Erin Barry (Chambers) May 31, 2010:

more context please I think we need more context to know what it means. I'm a native English speaker and I don't know if I could even paraphrase it accurately without more context.

Natalie May 30, 2010:

Какой, однако, богатый контекст...