I've been reading The Idiot, and the same as with Crime and Punishment, I am now seeing its influences on everything. I will share just one example, early in the novel. Prince Myshkin, the protagonist and titular 'idiot,' is a very open and guileless person, which leads many people who encounter him to doubt his …
Dead Souls: more shitty rich people
I read Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol recently, and found it quite agreeable, as the narrator would say. The story features an enigmatic land owner named Chichikov, who, at the beginning of the story is a stranger in town who everyone finds intriguing. He travels around to all the landowners in the area, and attempts …
Book catch up #2, good ol Nabokov
Whenever I've read something boring or confusing, or just plain bad, I read some Nabokov as my next, cause it's guaranteed to be good. This time I read Pnin, and as always, it was beautiful, funny, and just lovely. Pnin is a Russian living in America, and teaching Russian at a college. He is absent …
Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
I just finished this one, my first Tolstoy, chosen because it's the shortest novel he wrote. The story is about a nobleman in 1880, Nekhlyudov, who finds himself on a jury. One of the accused is a woman he knew in is past, and who he wronged when he was young. While watching the trial he …
The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov
Another terrific read by Nabokov, I have yet to be disappointed by his novels. This one follows a chess player, but you don't have to know a single thing about how to play chess in order to enjoy it. It's more about the mental states, and how imagining all the possible outcomes in a game …
Jonas David 