"Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dostoyevsky, like Tolstoy, is one of the pillars of Russian literature. Like Tolstoy, he tends to dwell on depressing subjects.

It took me two attempts to finally finish this book. My first attempt was back in high school, when I found the book too depressing to continue. My second attempt, the success among the two, occured more than eighteen years later. It is perhaps because I am much older now that I find the patience for this long, dense book, and that I find the tolerance for Dostoyevsky's bleak style of writing.

All in all, Crime and Punishment isn't as dark as some of Tolstoy's short stories, but it lacks the uplift, the sense of predestination, that pervades a book like War and Peace. It is the story of a man who commits a horrible crime out of desperation, and the consequences of this crime. It is not light reading in any sense of the term, but if you haven't read it you should give it a try. One of its most famous passages is below.

"All at once a number of peasants came noisily out of the house, the greater part clad in red and blue shirts and sleeveless smock-frocks, tipsy, of course, and some singing, with valalaikas (Russian guitars) in their hands. 'Get in, get in, all of you,' cried out the young stout-shouldered peasant with a thick neck and face red as a carrot. 'Jump up, I am going to take the lot of you.'

"'What, with such a jade as that? You are out of your senses, Nikola,' and they began to laugh.

"'Come on. Get in!' cried Nikola, jumping into the wagon with the reins, and standing straight up in front, 'she only eats her head off, and I am sick of her. Get in, I say, and see me make her gallop.' He shook his whip, and gleefully prepared to flog the mare.

"' What, gallop that thing?' laughed the crowd.

"'Such a gallop as she has not has not had for ten years.'

"'Come on, no pity, brothers; get your whips.' "They began to clamber into the wagon, amidst laughter and jests. Six got in, and there was room for more. Amongst them was a stout red-faced woman, whom they placed in a corner. She was clad in red fustian, with a braided head-dress, and sat cracking nuts and laughing. All the crowd laughed with relish at seeing the mare trot with such a burden. Two fellows with whips stood ready to assist Nikola. The mare drew with all her might, but, far from a trot, she barely succeeded in moving her load one inch, and simply sprawled her feet about. She snorted and winced under the blows from three whips, falling rapidly upon her. The laughter in the wagon and from the crowd redoubled, and served to arouse Nikola's anger, and his whip rained blow upon blow on the back of the unfortunate beast."

Again, not the easiest reading in the world, but there is a lot to learn in Crime and Punishment. It's not always something we want to learn, but it is there, nevertheless.

"Magician: Apprentice" by Raymond E. Feist

A while back I read Mr. Feist's "Krondor: the Betrayal." I thought it was a good book, even if the plot elements were largely borrowed from the computer game, and not creditable to the author.

"Magician: Apprentice" is the first book he wrote, and as such is entirely his creation. It was written WAY back, in 1977, when I was three years old.

The novel details the adventures of Pug, the magician's apprentice, and his friend Tomas. Pug and Tomas grow to manhood in the village of Crydee, and after being apprenticed to different masters, they set forth on a series of adventures. These adventures are loosely framed within the Riftwar chronology that the author set out in subsequent books. I read the "Author's Preferred Edition," and details were added to make this novel fit in better with his later novels.

Some of the vocabulary used in this book is silly, but as such is not unusual for the genre. All of the "miscreants" and "knaves" thrown about don't quite mesh with the Modern English used to frame the story. Feist's style of writing comes across as warmed-over Tolkein, without either the richness of Tolkein's language or Tolkein's talent for world-building. Of course comparing just about any fantasy writer to Tolkein is like comparing the ant to the ant-hill, but I think a less archaic vocabulary would have made for a stronger book.

Just the same, the author spins a good tale. I read this one fast, and I never found it boring. The characters are consistent, the plot hums along, and despite questionable uses of the English language it shows a strong sense of craftsmanship throughout. I would give it 7 stars out of 10, and if I have the time I'll probably read one of the many, many sequels.

"The 39 Steps" by James Buchan

I had no idea this was also a book. I've seen Hitchcock's film version several times, and I'd heard of the other film adaptations, but I didn't know this was a book until I discovered a copy in the local bookstore.

The author described this work as being "a shocker," in the vein of other popular novels of his day. He turned to writing relatively late in life, and served the British government in various capacities up until his death. His book also brings to mind Conrad's "The Secret Agent," and H. Rider Haggard's novels. Since both authors are mentioned in this novel, it seems likely that Conrad and Haggard would have also been familiar with this book.

I have never been a big fan of the mystery/suspense genre, primarily because the plots seem so contrived. Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, bores the life out of me, and contemporary suspense writers only seem a little less boring by comparison.

Nevertheless, this is a novel worth reading. At just 103 pages, it's very short, and the plot clips along at a good pace. Even if the protagonist brings to mind the more interesting Allan Quatermain, it is a good read nonetheless. The story revolves around German efforts to spy on England and France, and before you know it the narrator is caught up in an international conspiracy that threatens to shake Western civilization to its very foundations.

One thing I especially liked about this book is that it reveals the narrator's psychology more explicity than most other books in this genre try to do. For this reason, not all of the suspense of the novel is connected to external events, but rather to how the narrator may or may not be interpreting these events correctly.

This novel isn't "classic" by any definition, but it is a good book. I would give it 7 stars out of 10.

"Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

This is the second or third time I've read a novel in the Norton Critical Edition series. Books in this series are always slightly ridiculous, given that the commentary/background for the novel is always longer than the novel itself. In this instance, a novel of 100 or so pages is accompanied by 150 pages of masturbatory comments by miscellaneous scholars.

Even so, "Wide Sargasso Sea" is an excellent book. It is to some extent a reimagining of the Bertha character in Jane Eyre, set in the Caribbean before she was taken back to England. The novel explores the contrasts between master and slave, black and white, English and Creole, and also between the manners and customs of the colonizer among reluctant colonials.

Antoinette, born into the post-slaverholding society of Barbados, watches her mother descend into madness after their house is burned down by resentful locals. Antoinette is thereafter raised in a convent, and married off to a visiting Englishman. The two feel affection for one another at first, but by the end of the book her husband revolts against the unknowable aspects of his surroundings, and gives into suspicions regarding his new wife.

Jean Rhys, the author, was born in Barbados, and eventually settled in England up until her death. She made portraits with words, and "Wide Sargasso Sea" is without a doubt the best-known of such portraits. It is a painting of a landscape, and a people, that have largely vanished from our world. I highly recommend this book, though it is a bit on the depressing side.

"Aesop's Fables" by Aesop

Aesop lived in Ancient Greece, 500 or more years before Christ. He was supposedly a slave, possibly deformed, and there is anecdotal evidence that he was condemned to death by the Oracle of Delphi. Long after his death, his stories - many of which were not even written by him, and didn't even originate in Greece - were collected into the group of tales we are familiar with today.

Among these fables are "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Sheperd Boy and the Wolf" (a.k.a. "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"), and many other tales with a lesson behind them. Almost all of them are less than a page long. Almost all of them feature animals.

I can't really say either good or bad about this book. It is just a collection of disconnected stories, many of whose "morals" were lost on me. It's an easy read though, and I finished it in a few hours. The version I read was the Penguin Classics version, though there are many "kid friendly" versions out there.

"1984" by George Orwell

I remember being forced to read "Animal Farm" back in high school. I hated it. I thought it was one of the most labored, pretentious things I had ever read. 18 years later, I cannot say whether or not I would hold the same opinion. Maybe I would find something in the book that escaped me at 18 years of age, or maybe I would find it to be just as dull, uninspired, and annoying as I remember.

Whatever the case may be, I am happy to say that 1984 is a great book. It feels fresh and new, even though it was written 62 years ago. It has a lot to say about our world, our lives, and the way we manage both. It is a book about the future, written long before I was born, but it feels like it was written yesterday.

1984 follows the trials of Winston Smith, as he struggles to survive daily live in Oceania. Oceania in this case does not refer to Australasia, but rather to a future empire composed of the British Isles, the Americas, and the southern tip of Africa. The world of Oceania resembles, in many ways, the Soviet Union during the height of its power. This similarity was probably not intentional. Oceania could be anywhere, and could be around the corner for any country or group of people, given the right (or wrong) set of circumstances.

I can't say much else about the book without giving away much of the story, and discovering this story within the novel is much more fun than reading about it here. I would give this book ten out of ten stars, because it's timeless.

And incidentally, anyone who liked this book will probably also like a book called "The Gulag Archipelago," by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It covers much of the same subject matter, even though it was written about the Soviet Union. Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" also touches upon similar themes, and both are excellent choices if you have already finished 1984.