#2 of 52

So it took me over a week to finish this book even though it's short. I got behind on reading this weekend because I went skiing with the Marriotts. Every time I started reading I either fell asleep or was bombarded by kids who wanted to play Guess Who or have a snowball fight.

2. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I read Crime in Punishment in high school and loved it. But since then I haven't read anymore Dostoyevsky. I found this book on my shelf (probably purchased for a literature class but ran out of time to get to) and thought how nice to be able to read a short story by a Russian author. The book is written as a journal. The narrator begins by stating, "I am a sick man. . .I am a spiteful man." I found the book a bit tedious to get through but I enjoy how Dostoyevsky is able to depict the heart of man so well: how we cannot do the things we want to do, and do the things we do not want to do. The end of the book sums up the plight of the narrator:

"Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated object."

"Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less."

What I love about Dostoyevsky is his ability to make his reader identify with a wretched man, revealing a part of oneself we try so hard to ignore. I'd recommend it if you're feeling introspective.