What is your favorite English book?

Mine is probably The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Or maybe The Brothers Karamazov. I think Dostoyevsky is the best writer in the history of our civilization. He has a way of stripping away all the surface silliness and seeing straight to the heart of what it means to be human. Sometimes when reading him I feel as though he knows me completely, through some sort of time-travel-telepathy process, and is laying bare my secret heart that not even I recognized (or allowed myself to admit) until that point. He sees all the baseness that's there, and also the divinity. He has a genius that has you instantly caring about his characters, and identifying with them. And the stories are so powerful and compelling that you can't stop thinking about them for days and weeks afterward. I remember my actual life seeming so paltry and unimportant compared to what was happening in the books, when I first read them. And I get more and more out of the novels each time I read them, as my life experiences deepen my understanding of the situation, and of the people involved. He told the truth. That's all I can say. For anyone who thinks they might like to read Dostoyevsky, try the novella White Nights. It is fairly short and very characteristic of him. If you like it, you will like Dostoyevsky, I think. Another short story of his that I love is called The Little Hero. It is very hard to find, though, having been out of print for a while. One huge reason I will study Russian is to read Dostoyevsky in the original.

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