Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

A friend of mine who loves Tolstoy told me she couldn't stand Dostoevsky. Now as I've mentioned in past reviews, I am not a huge fan of Tolstoy - I don't dislike him, per se, but having read two of his books, I'm fine to leave it at that and not read him again, if that makes sense. This friend also loves Jane Austen, another author I enjoy to a point but don't love (sorry Austen fans, I'm just keeping it real! :) ) I started to suspect that I might actually prefer Dostoevsky for some reason...

...and I was right! I enjoyed this book MUCH more than Anna Karenina and War and Peace. It seemed more focused than those Tolstoy books to me. It did feature some amazingly long (multi-page) paragraphs, and frankly Raskolnikov was rather moody and prickly and had quick changes of temper that seemed familiar from Tolstoy, but for some reason it didn't annoy me as much; maybe it was because it made more sense in the context of the book. Yes, both authors pontificate, and I can understand that that was simply a feature of literature of this era, but again, it seemed a bit less heavy-handed and more germane to the story in this book.

If I can ever get a handle on Mount TBR, I'll have to tackle some other classic Dostoevsky and see how that goes - maybe for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015? :)

You many remember that in my original TBR Pile Challenge post, I said I was going to read this as a chapter-a-day read in 2013, starting on Jan. 1. I did in fact start doing that, but was unable to keep up with it. Of course, now I wish I had kept up with it, for many reasons; it would have been easier to finish that way, of course, and I would have had more time to digest it than during my 2.5 day binge while I desperately attempt to finish off the 2013 TBR Pile Challenge in the last days of December 2013.