Finished
Brothers Karamazov yesterday... It's a very deep story at the end of which I had to rethink how I thought of certain characters and completely withdraw from any judgement whatsoever (except that I still think that they are masters of their own misery -- and yes, I hate Puccini's
La Boheme as well, and for the same reason -- simply because none of the 'havoc bringing' characters thinks of others, and not single one of them wants to change until it's too late -- all are so passionate). But mostly this book is about Christianity and modernity, Christianity in Russia, it's role, values, and hopes for the future, Orthodox Christian perception of crime, punishment, and forgiveness. Poor Dostoyevsky, I think he would have died with a heart attack if he learned what happened to the Russian Empire years after his death, and how everything he deemed high transformed -- irreversibly.
It gives much, much food for thought. It's only a tip of the iceberg that I could mention here. A masterpiece by a literary maverick. I
strongly recommend this book.
Now I'm reading
La Chemise by Anatole France. It's a small but interesting story about a king who needed a shirt from a happy man to recover from his illness
We used to have lots of books by Anatole France in our home library, but that library perished while my family moved, so... now, it seems, I'm slowly gathering books for my own home library that will come into existence one day
