Classics Considered

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My brother and I are still making our way through Crime and Punishment, with the hope of finishing it by the end of the year. I have got past the “crime” now and at the point where Raskolnikov is (once again) losing his mind. It’s a really excellent read this time around, but not exactly holiday cheer, so that’s one reason I haven’t been reading it as much as I ought to be.

The Sickness unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard

Yet another “second attempt book”… guess I was in the mood for those! I am determined to finish it this time. The Sickness unto Death is about despair and how the Christian faith both acknowledges and solves this universal problem. Well… that’s my idea of what the book’s about, anyway. 😆 On a scale of Fear and Trembling to The Concept of Anxiety, this book falls towards the latter end of difficulty, so I cannot recommend it as an starting point. I can’t pretend to understand everything dear old K. is talking about, but there are some gems here for the patient excavator.

The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector

Picked this up yesterday to read for Brazil in the Reading the World Challenge (I really ought to create a page for this!). The religious-sounding title instilled in me some uncertainty, but the concept—a kind of variation on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis—was definitely intriguing.

I’m at 10% now and I really don’t know how I’m going to feel about it. I can’t decide whether I love it or hate it. 😆 The opening (and the whole book, as I gather), is one long internal monologue, vaguely reminiscent of Steppenwolf. She speaks very obscurely and through metaphors, and at times you don’t really know if she’s in her right mind, but I could empathize with what she was talking about regarding personal identity, so that’s something. Here’s a few quotes that already arrested my attention:

Maybe disappointment is the fear of no longer belonging to a system . . . What I used to be, was no good for me. But it was from that not-good that I’d organized the best thing of all: hope.

Holding someone’s hand was always my idea of joy.

Will speaking to you scare you and make me lose you? but if I don’t speak I’ll be lost, and in losing myself lose you.

I’ll have much more to say about this book, that’s for sure.