How many people here have read Fyodor Dostoevsky ?

chic said:
Honestly I find the Russian authors brilliant but ponderous. I was trying to read Crime and Punishment in college, just for pleasure. It wasn't required, but company came to my house so I played board games with them instead and gave up on Dostoevsky. I'm sort of ashamed about this. :(
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You can give it another go. He is a great writer in my opinion.
 

This is why I fear Russians and why his writing and the names made it so much work...maybe I am lazy when it comes to complex thinking? And after reading this, it is no wonder Russians believe some new American pronoun confusion is bizarre..can you imagine if that were to take hold in Russia after reading the following? :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:

"In Russian documents, these three parts are most often presented in the following order: last name, first name, patronymic. This means that Igor Ivanovich Sechin would appear on official documentation as Sechin Igor Ivanovich.

Surnames
Many surnames change depending on the gender of the person. This is especially true for surnames ending in v (Russian letter в) and n (Russian letter н). For these names, typically, the feminine form is the same as the male form but has an additional a at the end.

Some surnames, such as those ending with the popular Ukrainian ending -enko, do not change based on gender. This means the patronymic will determine whether a person is identified as male or female on official documents (see below). The Ukrainian parliamentarian Yulia Timoshenko and her husband Oleksandr, for example, share the same surname.

Suffixes that do not change based on gender include:

  • -ko (-ко)
  • -la (-ла)
  • -lo (-ло)
  • -uk (-ук)
  • -iv (-ив)
  • -ich (-ич)
  • -ykh (-ых)....."


Befuddled comes to mind. I had a Russian exchange student for a year. She was amazingly intelligent, and quiet. Scary in a way.....I respect Russian fortitude after living with this young lady for a year.
 
I keep meaning to but not yet.
I find I must be in the mood for a serious weighty novel. I believe it is good to read such literature to challenge myself.
 

In Germany sometimes the law students are recommended to read Raskolnikov's story in "Crime and punishment". I doubt that many of them do it. The students of psychology should even read all of his books, but nope.

I never had the endurance nor the passion to read his long novels. But I read his short story "White Nights" and like watching the movies after his books. There are some of them on YouTube as "The Brothers Karamazov" in Russian language with English subtitles.


or "The Idiot" (not the whole book)


(You can click on subtitles and translation into English).

"White Nights" is also on YouTube

 
A number of years ago I power-read a lot of the classics...Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird...etc.

Crime and Punishment was on my list. I found it to be a fascinating read.
 
Warrigal said:
Exactly. I had the same problem in High School when the set text was Wuthering Heights.
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That Kathy and Katherine choice of Emily's was annoying. I like Charlotte Bronte better anyway.

My book club is choc full of English majors and one of them learned Russian in college, just so she could read the Russian authors in their original. When I complained about all the name variations she said that all those ways of saying it tell us all how the person talking feels about the character. 'Kay.

I've read Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and the Idiot, I think.

Tolstoy is my Russian, I've read Anna Karenina several times and I love War and Peace, but prefer to let the movie makers bring it to me all fleshed out. Most recently I really enjoyed this beautiful version:
 
I like David Poyer - David Palmer, Heinlein, that sort of stuff.
Currently reading 1st adition of "The Plains of Passage," Jean Auel
but it's sort of descriptive and long winded, boring for many minutes.
I collect 1st editions to read. Average about 1/2 hour a day reading.
Many years ago it was hours a day. Maybe reading internet junk is why.

The Wife likes the Oral Series Books, listens with earbud from Cell phone.
 
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I tried multiple times with his books. Always lost my way as I lost interest in his convoluted stories. Read nearly everything written by Tolstoy though. In fact, I'm currently rereading War and Peace and finding it much harder to track the characters than it was when I was much younger.
 
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jujube said:
I had a semester of Russian Literature in college. It was the longest three years of my life. The one book we really concentrated on was Crime and Punishment. It was interesting, but hard going.

One of the problems with reading Russian authors is that everybody keeps changing names. Say you have a guy named Nikolas Ivanovich Toyotasky. His mother calls him Nikita, his sisters call him Kolya and his old nurse calls him Nishki. His father calls him Nikolai. His fellow cadets in the army called him Totsky, for some reason. Periodically, he gets referred to as Count Toyotasky-Borschsky because his father is a minor prince. His best friend calls him Schastlivets because of some old joke.

You have to keep going back a hundred pages to find out who they're talking about.
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I agree, the names are so dizzying!
 
I was assigned Notes From the Underground in a Lit class, and was consumed by it, so I started reading more Dostoevsky. I read Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and I think The Gambler. It was a slog, but none of it compared to Notes From the Underground. Just a year ago, I decided to read Notes From the Underground again, so I found a used copy on ebay. For the life of me, I don't know why I liked it so much the first time, when I so easily related to the main character. All I could think of was that I have changed, and I can no longer relate to the character anymore than I can relate to the person I was when I read it the first time.
 
I tried to a couple of times. I mean who doesn't want to be able to say "I've read Dostoevsky"? You can really impress some people if you can say that. They'll think you're a real cool smart dude. But I just couldn't hack it. I'm afraid Stephen King is more my speed.

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Yes, I read most of his works and I might say i read most of the works of Tolstoy (including War and Peace). War and Peace just goes on and on and on. Just like our present TV commercials.

I always wanted to see Tolstoy's estate in Russia but never did!
 
Trade said:
I tried to a couple of times. I mean who doesn't want to be able to say "I've read Dostoevsky"? You can really impress some people if you can say that. They'll think you're a real cool smart dude. But I just couldn't hack it. I'm afraid Stephen King is more my speed.

​

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Love Stephen and Fyodor. Love Stephen more, though. Both authors mental.
 
Bretrick said:
House of the dead
Crime and punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
The Gambler

To name a few of his works.
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I loved Crime and Punishment. It contains one of my favorite quotes. Do you have a favorite?

Here is mine from page 176, though it has been too long to recall the exact context:

“Would you believe, they insist on complete absence of individualism and that just what they relish! Not to be themselves, to be as unlike themselves as they can. That’s what they consider the highest point of progress. If only their nonsense were their own, but as it is …”

“Listen!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna interrupted timidly, but it only added fuel to the flames.

“What do you think?” shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, “you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it.

To go wrong in one’s own way is better is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a manning the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgement, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it is what we are used to! Am I right, am I right? cried Razumihim, pressing and shaking the two ladies’ hands.
 
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