>>...
>>>
>>>Now I am outright touting. OK, I will tout. Read Dostoyevsky! If you happen to be a fan of "The Sopranos", the territory will be familiar. Dostoyevsky set the bar. And he set it very high.
>>
>>Made my ears prick up! ...
>>
>>Never thought of reading Dostoyevsky. I think it was cos I was bitten by a few of the "required reading", so-called classic E. European authors, such as Kafka and Gogol. I dragged my bored bones through several and asked myself at the end what all the fuss and acclaim was about.
>
>
>I also had to suffer through one of those European lit classes -- Kafka, Rilke, Sartre, Beckett and the like. To say I found them tedious would be amping up the excitement level about tenfold.

lol

Sartre - agreed. Maybe Camus ("The Plague") isn't too bad.

>"My name is Gregor Samsa and I am an insect" -- yeah, OK. To make matters worse, the course was taught by an elderly German gent (allegedly an international expert in his field) whose inpenetrably thick accent made Adolf Hitler sound as melodic as Edith Piaf. But Dostoyevsky, that's a whole different story. His books burst with humanity and energy.

I think I was put off D. by the high-brows on TV etc. who bandie his name about at will, along with Nietze (spelling?)

>Give "Crime and Punishment" a try. I don't think you'll regret it.

Think I might just do that. :-) A film of it was on the telly a few months back - didn't have half a day to spend watching it.