It seems like every time I read a Russian novel it rocks my little world. I don't know if I'll ever read anything as relentlessly witty as Pushkin's Eugine Onegin. And it's a novel in verse, so I'm sure there are things that were too subtle to translate well from Russian to English and it is still extraordinary. I started to slow down when I was reading it about a third of the way in, because I already knew I was going to be sad when it was over.
Anna Karenina and War and Peace both had such terrific character development. I always believed in every decision that each character made since they were all so individual and their motives and desires were distinct. It seems simple, but it's not. Especially, when you have as many characters as Tolstoy insists on having.
Anton Chekhov's short stories devastated me. It was as if the author would take you into a world and then end the narrative when the characters were at their most desperate point, leaving you to fill in their future. Certain passages of In the Ravine were just like poetry.
Now I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov and I'm really enjoying it. If you have ever wondered about the meaning of life or the existence of God, it seems like Dostoevsky has already thought of every possible argument and is hashing it all out between four brothers, so you should just read this book instead of lying awake at night agonizing over why you're here.
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