Reading

[bagheera_san]

1. The Time-Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
2. Gregorius by Hartman v. Aue
3. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
4. The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
5. The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud
6. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
7. Der Verdacht by F. Dürrenmatt
8. Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann
9. Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
10. Storm Front by Jim Butcher
11. England, England by Julian Barnes
12. Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
13. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
14. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

15. The Idiot by Dostoevsky
Excuse me if this is going to be incoherent raving. I just read the last seventy pages of this novel in one go.
First thing: If you've never read anything by Dostoevsky, this is not the book to start. Read Crime and Punishment first. That novel sucks you right in and doesn't let you go, and if it wasn't so damn long I'd have read it in one piece. Also, C&P is one of the most perfect novels I've ever read. After that, you'll forgive Dostoevsky his rants about Nihilism and his weird epilogues.
Now, The Idiot. I bought this book in St. Petersburg last year, started it, and never got past Myshkin's ENDLESS first visit at the Epanchins. I also can't quite forgive the narrator for not telling us what precisely happened in Moscow - the story just jumps ahead a few months and only gives us tantalizing glimpses at the time three of the main characters spent (in a very dubious relationship with each other) in Moscow. And the narrator keeps doing that, only to go back to the time that was skipped over and narrating it in a sort of confusing flashback.

And yet it's incredible. The Idiot is a novel that rambles and disgresses and jumps around and doesn't get to the point except that each part ends with a scene so dramatic it practically knocks you out. There's subtext (like woah. Just...wow. That last scene. Every scene in which Myshkin and Rogozhin so much as pass by each other in the street!), so many shades of madness (there are characters in this novel that aren't mad - Dostoevsky spends several pages explaining this to us at one point - but they're not main characters), passion, tragedy. And thank god there's no consoling epilogue this time: the ending is tragic and perfect.