Book #39 of 2019: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky I think this is my favorite of the three Dostoyevsky novels I’ve now read, but that still isn’t saying much. Aside from an electrifying early sequence depicting the titular crime and its initial aftermath — which favorably brings to mind certain suspense writers that I …
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Book #1 of 2019: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky I can understand why this book is a classic of Russian literature, but it’s a long and digressive tome, and as with author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s earlier novel The Idiot, it regularly prioritizes philosophical debate over its plot and characters. I would have preferred far less …
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Book #122 of 2017: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Idiot — which might more fairly be called The Naïf — follows a wide-eyed innocent as he leaves his Swiss sanitarium for Russian high society and generally finds himself unprepared for its corruption and amorality. Some of these events are droll, but I felt there …
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