The Brothers Karamazov is a classic novel centering around the Karamazov family. The father is a sensualist, as his eldest son. The middle son is an intellectual, and the youngest son is deeply religious. Due to decades of strained relations, as well as love triangle more complicated than something from Riverdale, the father is murdered. His own son stands accused. It’s the stuff of high drama, and was a bucket list book for me to read. Unfortunately, after four months of reading, I respected but […]
Sin and Redemption
I seem to be on a bit of a Russian kick these days. Many years ago, I read several Dostoyevsky novels but I really don’t remember a thing about them. I decided to revisit Crime and Punishment not only because it is, perhaps, the best known of his novels but also because it’s less than 300 pages long. Turns out, it’s also quite the page turner — a psychological drama involving a murderer whose physical and mental health deteriorate as an investigator closes in on […]
How NyQuil killed my buzz for great big Russian novels.
I’M FRE—I mean, FINISHED!!!! Yay, I read an enormous Russian novel!!!! Seriously, what was I thinking??? For real, though. I’ve had the stupidest chest cold since last Saturday, and I feel disgusting. I had to work from home and conference with my students via Skype on Wednesday because I was coughing too hard to really make my long commute feasible. And spending my day and night hopped up on cold medicine was not conducive to paying periods of rapt attention to a seriously dense […]