book: humiliated and insulted
author: fyodor dostoevsky
method: gift (jenya)
completion date: 19/05/10
i always feel an immence amount of preassure when people give me a book as a gift when a) i don't feel that they would know the authors i like and b) when i didn't pick it out. i always feel i have to like something someone gives me. if i don't like something that someone lent me its no skin off my back if i don't like it because i can just give it back, but when they bought it, i feel its like they loved it and they thought i would love not just to read it but to own it.
i felt a great deal of apprehension when my cousin gave me humiliated and insulted for my birthday. i have never read any other dostoevsky and always saw him as being above my reading level. but i found i couldn't put this book down. it was so poetically written, but it wasn't gratuitous. i never found myself thinking 'geeez fyodor just get to the bloody point'. he never languished in his own brilliance, instead he communicated (its a strangely simple way to put it but its the only way that makes sense). he told his story simply and clearly. i found the dialogue stiff at times, but i tend to blame that on the translation and not the writing.
if there is anyone else who has never read dostoevsky i would recommend this one. i couldn't stand to put it down, however it does have a very sad ending. not entirely heartbreaking, but a few cracks appeared.
xo -ellebee
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I've so far only read one Dostoevsky story (if I'm remembering right) "The Double", it was pretty awesome and to the point.
ReplyDeleteI can appreciate the apprehension going into reading such a big name writer- it was comforting when I got in a couple of pages and went "oh, so he writes like this" and can form an image of it, can place it in a framework or style that I can understand and almost quantify