Okay back to reality. Medical carer responsibilities and a heavy academic load have situated me in a position where selecting my books is taken up with extreme seriousness.
Sometimes I wish I could be the type of person who says, "Life is hard, just read light novels and relax." Well, what I've learned about myself is that I want to be that kind of person, but actually I'm not. I sink down deeper into intense literature when life is hard rather than swim at the surface.
I have been taking a slow, meandering read through Michael Katz's translation of The Brother Karamazov, with some chapters of David McDuff's translation.
Why you make ask? It's because the McDuff is paperback (though a doorstopper) and the Katz is hardback. I don't want to get coffee on my hardback. I don't mind bending the crap out of the Penguin McDuff. I actually love both translations so I just make sure to stop on the chapter end.
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| source: read & co |
Somehow my love for Dostoevsky just grows and grows. It is this way with me. I am constantly rereading my favorite authors and falling more and more in love with their works and with them.
I sometimes have FOMO while watching BookTube and seeing people read currently published works and following all of the book prizes, but then I pick up Swann's Way, or Song of Solomon, or Austen and I'm like, "Ahhhh, THIS is home."
I have a few hardbacks from the Booker Prize short list for 2024, yet I'm taking my sweet time with The Brothers and sinking down to re-re-re-read The Grand Inquisitor (proceed with caution it can seem a spoiler to read that link).
Virginia Woolf (a kindred spirit of mine) said:
The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Outside of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.
I wanted to get my literary hands on Rubenstein's Virginia Woolf and the Russian point of view, but it is going for
Could you imagine????
Either way, I echo Woolf. Dostoevsky's works are the "stuff of the soul". He is deeply philosophical and I find myself reflecting on my life in intense and reflective ways. You learn more about who you are as a person when you read Dostoevsky.
Onto other things...
Now's a good time to remember how much I loathe feeling trapped in the Amazon universe
NOTHING good comes out of monopolies. It took him some time, but Bezos is now changing publishing and I know that I don't even fully own all of these kindle books I paid all of this money for.
I could care less WHO is setting the prices on these ebooks, this is beyond ridiculous to ask me to pay $14.99 for a 300 page ebook all while the physical book costs $11.99 with free shipping. This is foolishness.
I do download my classics from a few places for free, and will make a post about those.
I had to remind myself that a lot of what I truly love reading on kindle is hundreds of years old and therefore can be accessed for free, and he can shove his prices/ebook deleting behavior up his prime spot.
