Welcome to Litsy!

Least favorite books I read or DNF‘d this year 🙃

For enthusiasts of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I recently delved into Dostoevsky's works, and it was an exhilarating journey!.

As he once said:
"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for."

I must admit, I found it challenging to imagine Dostoevsky's works in any other way, given the poetic way.. ? Have you experienced his works in a different light? Please share your thoughts and reviews! ??

I started this with the #HashtagBrigade in January and didn‘t finish it until March, actually. Not my favorite book of all time or even Dostoyevsky, but one that will stick with me for a long while.

#12Booksof24

This was such an amazing book, the characters are so unique and well defined, you can't help but love them in spite of their flaws (or because of them). Though it's a very long book, it is interesting enough to keep you circling back.

“'What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.“

“And in the very depths of that degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded. Though I may be following the devil,“

“Crossing himself [...] he turned resolutely in the direction of his terrible lady.“

“I expect [...] the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone.“

“It's impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die.“

The Matryoshka Bros and I are feeling like we deserve one of these stickers. 😂

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BookMarathon

#hashtagbrigade
@BarkingMadRead

I‘m embarking on a journey into #russianliterature.

I haven‘t read a lot of #classics outside of the Bronte sisters, but I‘m at an age now where I‘m constantly asking myself questions about life, love, good/evil, morality, etc. So I‘m seeking out novels that wrestle with these questions.

I‘m starting with #thebrotherskaramazov and then plan to move on to #annakarenina 📚.

Any others you all recommend? Any advice or thoughts are welcome. ☺️

Couldn‘t resist these beautiful matryoshka dolls in Belgium!! #hashtagbrigade @Aimeesue (the smallest one got cut out of the pic)

I‘m at a monastery in Bulgaria, called the Rila Monastery, and this mural on their church reminded me of a couple scenes in #thebros I‘m going to tag the entire #hashtagbrigade so I don‘t miss anyone 🤣feel free to ignore this if you didn‘t read along with us

In the end I enjoyed the premise and loved the trial scenes, but this book just meanders and so much of it contemplates religion and I just 🥱... but, overall, glad I read it & can cross this off my list of classics tbr 🎉

Epilogue C3

When they began to fill in the grave, he suddenly began to point worriedly at the falling earth…and he suddenly fell quiet. At that point they reminded him that he must crumble the crust of bread, and he grew terribly agitated, whipped out the crust and began to break it in his fingers, throwing the morsels about the little grave: ‘Now come flying, little birds, now come flying, little sparrows!‘ he muttered, worriedly.

Epilogue, C2

‘Well, so this is what I have decided, Alyosha, listen!‘ he began again, having suppressed his excitement. ‘Grusha and I will go there – and at once we shall till the land, work, with the wild bears, in solitude, somewhere as far away as possible. After all, there too there will be a place that is far away!"

#MatryoshkaBros

E3: the funeral #thisistheend ?!? #ifeelcheated #cliffhangerending #thatpoorfamilythough #wedidit #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

Epilogue, 1

On the fifth day after Mitya‘s trial, very early in the morning, Alyosha arrived at Katerina Ivanovna‘s house in order to come to a final arrangement concerning a certain important matter and, in addition, with an errand to discuss with her. She sat and talked with him in that same room where once she had received Grushenka; near by, in the next room, Ivan Fyodorovich lay in acute fever and unconscious.

#MatryoshkaBros

B12C14

Up aloft, in the gallery, in the very furthest corner there resounded a piercing woman‘s wail: it was Grushenka. She had earlier gone to someone with entreaties, and had been readmitted to the chamber before the onset of the judicial pleadings. Mitya was led away.

#MatryoshkaBros

E2: drama in the hospital #dmitryisill #katyacomesandtheymakeup #Garrivesandtheclawscomeout #dmitryiswillingtoescape #eventhoughamericasucks 🙄 #staytuned #almostthere #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

E1: the aftermath #ivanisill #katyaiscaringforhim #theyhatchedanescapeplan #betterbreakouttheritahayworthposter #willkatyavisitD #staytuned #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

ch 12.14: Dmitry speaks up #heswearshedidntdoit #thejurydeliberates #guilty #omgwemadeittotheepilogue #itsamiracle #staytuned #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

In my defense, I chose this pic before I realized the epilogue had three parts 🙄

What even was that?

I got to the epilogue and decided to finish. I was surprised to see even the epilogue had three chapters 🤣

One star for the book and five stars for the company. #HashtagBrigade #TheBros

@BarkingMadRead if I had known you in high school I would have had better grades in English class. Honestly I don‘t know how you do it every day. @Aimeesue I really hope you publish a book of your hilarious scenes.

B12C13

Here the orator was interrupted by clapping that was uncontainable and almost frenzied. Of course, not all the chamber applauded, but all the same a half of the chamber applauded. The fathers and mothers applauded. From above, where the ladies sat, came shrieks and cries. Handkerchiefs were waved. The chairman began with all his might to ring the bell.

#MatryoshkaBros

ch 12.13: what makes a father a father? #nobodyhereknows #idontknowifthisspeechhelped #staytuned #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

I did it! While there were chapters that I did not understand the significance of, I overall liked this novel. I know, unpopular opinion! Dostoevsky examines good versus evil, religious ideology, love and hate, and family. There are the struggles to conform to a given mindset, to break away from familial ideals, to resist temptation. Dostoevsky longwindedly dissects religion - what is belief, what does it mean to follow the church, and, through ⬇️

B12C12

"But above all, above all I am troubled, driven out of myself by the thought that of all the mass of facts that the prosecution has heaped on the defendant, there is not a single one that is in any way precise or irrefutable, and that the unhappy man is going to perish solely on account of the combined weight of those facts."

#MatryoshkaBros

ch 12.12: it‘s gotta be Smerdy #didimentionthisguyisgood #whatwilltheverdictbe #guiltyorinnocent #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

I don‘t know if I have ever been more relieved to reach the last page of a novel! Truly, if it had not been for the dogged perseverance of @BarkingMadRead and others who offered hashtags that assured me I was not alone in this crazed wasteland of #blahblahblah, I would never—I repeat never—have finished this. Honestly, I enjoyed the last 300 pages more than the first 500–again, a sentence I hope never to write again. My expectations were high…

ch 12.11: the facts of the case #thisguyisgood #istillwonderaboutthatmoneythough #staytuned #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

B12C11

By a computation of time it was proven that the defendant, having run out of the kitchen…was in the constant company of others, and so could not have divided the three thousand and hidden it somewhere in the town. It was this that that formed the grounds for the prosecutor‘s assumption that the money was hidden in some cleft or crevice in Mokroye. Why, might it not indeed be in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho?

#MatryoshkaBros

B12C10

But psychology,though it is a deep thing, resembles a stick with two ends‘…But here is an example.The defendant, running away at night, climbs the fence and casts down by a blow from a brass pestle the lackey who has seized him by the leg. Thereupon he immediately leaps back into the garden and spends an entire five minutes troubling himself over the man whom he has cast down, to find out whether he has killed him or not.

#MatryoshkaBros

Did I forget to post yesterday?!?
ch 12.10: and now the defense #imthroughwiththisguy #dispelalltheprosecutorscrap #butwillithelp #shortchapter #hallelujah #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

B12C9

Much frenzy, wild Karamazovian unrestraint and emotionality– & also something more, something that clamours in the heart; that something is conscience, its terrible gnawings! But the pistol is the only way out – I do not know whether Karamazov thought about “what will be there”, and is Karamazov capable of thinking, in Hamletian style, about what will be there? No,other lands have Hamlets, but ours has only Karamazovs!‘
#MatryoshkaBros

Freud “The most magnificent novel ever written”
Me “There has NEVER been a novel more filled with blah, blah, blah than this! The least murdery murder mystery EVER written. Absolutely boring and painful to read!”
I finished it.
Thank god for the #hashtagbrigade @BarkingMadRead and #dioramaqueen @Aimeesue I finished a week early cuz I just can‘t anymore #peaceout

B12C8

‘but others, too, have testified to the same thing: the defendant himself, his brother and even the manservant Grigory, all those who might be expected to have known him most intimately. In addition to his being dispirited by the falling sickness, Smerdyakov was “cowardly as a hen”. “He fell at my feet and kissed them,” the defendant informed us, “he is a hen with the falling sickness”

#MatryoshkaBros

Having gotten through MIDDLEMARCH, ANNA KARENINA--even WAR AND PEACE, I was never so happy to reach 100% on my Kindle. As a former high school English teacher, the one thing I stressed to students over and over when writing was to SHOW and not TELL. Oh, does this novel have too much telling. It's brilliant in parts and overall a compelling story, yet, all that remains in my head is #blahblahblah. Couldn't have finished without the #hashtagbrigade.

I get it, it‘s theatrical, the personalities of the bros because of Fyodor‘s influence on them, the reader & narrator are sharing a joke about how over the top it all is. But I didn‘t like it. I read for entertainment, I was not consistently entertained-I was consistently frustrated
I will let the public‘s view on the prosecutors speech sum up my feelings. “But that was all rubbish” “there were some vague spots” “got a bit carried away”

ch 12.9: more of the same 🙄 #atleastheisdone #timeforthedefense #verylongwinded #blahblahblah #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

I finished this yesterday on my drive because I knew I‘d have a busy weekend with family and didn‘t want to drag it into April. I didn‘t enjoy it, and I probably wouldn‘t have finished it without the #HashtagBrigade. I had a hard time staying focused on many chapters and just didn‘t care what was happening or being discussed. Maybe I‘d get more from it at a different time, but I‘m probably not going to try again.

#TheBros #audiobook #1001books

Thanks to @BarkingMadRead for keeping us on track with this #chunkster. Interesting but I was like WTF am I reading. 😊🤣😂. Book 63/100 of the year.

#hashtagbrigade

The chicken really wanted to be in the shot. 🐓

This novel tried my patience but ultimately was a rewarding read. Very Russian and histrionic at times; indulgent in the way of many European 19th century novels with its digressions. A story about four brothers and their awful father, but also a long winded treatise on morality and how to live righteously in an imperfect world.

#TheBros #HashtagBrigade #Pemberlittens

I couldn‘t stand the thought of more Dostoyevsky in April, so I rushed through the ending today. The past month has been a lot of skipping days and then skimming to catch up as I‘ve gotten increasingly impatient with The Bros and our long winded narrator. Still, this has been lingering on my TBR for 20 years and I‘m super grateful to @BarkingMadRead and the #hashtagbrigade for getting me to finally read it!

ch 12.8: this guy is irritating me! #ishethelawyerorawitness #blahblahblah #somanytheories #solittletime #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens

B12C7

And indeed, behind this letter there lies a programme and premeditation. It is known to us that two whole days before the execution of his terrible design, the defendant declared that if he did not obtain the money he would kill his father & take the money from under his pillow “if only Ivan has gone away”. Here it was all considered – and what do we see: the whole thing was subsequently executed as if out of a book!

#MayryoshkaBros

Holy heck, I finished it! 😳 could not have done this without the #hashtagbrigade behind me!!
📚POP… written by formerly incarcerated person
📚 #52bookclub2024 … character driven
📚 #readaway2024 #mounttbr 20

Thursday ch 12.7: the whole book summed up in 5 pages 🙄 #notlookinggoodforourboy #staytuned #thebros #hashtagbrigade #pemberlittens