Chris Huntington: The Last Book I Loved, The Brothers Karamazov We were in the “international bookstore” of Xiamen, China, which is really a Chinese junk and bookstore but has half a dozen shelves of English books (such as Gossip Girl and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). My wife found a Signet Classics edition of The Brothers Karamazov. “Do you want that?” “I’ve already read it,” I said. I put it back on the shelf, and we left. When I was twenty-three, I loved Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. For most of my life, I had avoided The Brothers Karamazov because I was afraid it would somehow encourage all my neuroses. I’m half-Chinese, half-Hoosier. I was in love with an American girl who was back in the States living with a law student. That year I was as much an Alyosha as I am ever going to be. But then I got married and divorced. I read it like the only child I was. My second wife had been hurt by her first husband and I swore to protect her, but then we were unable to have a child and I felt like a failure in every way. Nothing?
Fantastic scifi graphic novels (that will get you hooked for life) Holy crap! An article on the internet I agree with wholeheartedly! I would add... 100% by Paul Pope- Probably a stronger piece than Heavy Liquid, in all honesty. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright/Heart of Empire by Bryan Talbot- One for Moorcock fans, this. Skreemer by Pete Milligan and Brett Ewins- Scarface meets Once Upon a Time in America in post apoclyptic New York. Smoke by Alex de Campi and Igor Kordey- Near future political action thriller starring a seven foot tall albino assassin and a gang of obese terrorists. I could go on all day, but I figure these ones fit quite nicely with the previous recommendations.
Don Sheehan DOSTOEVSKY AND MEMORY ETERNAL An Eastern Orthodox Approach to the Brothers Karamazov by Donald Sheehan Central to Eastern Orthodox Christendom is the singing, at the end of every Orthodox funeral, of the song known as “Memory Eternal” (in Church Slavonic: Vechnaya Pamyat). This song also concludes Dostoevsky’s great, final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, when, following the funeral of the boy whom Alyosha Karamazov (and the circle of schoolboys around Alyosha) had deeply loved, Alyosha speaks to the boys about the funeral and about the meaning of the resurrection, with this brief song as their steady focus. My thesis is simply this: to know something of this song’s meaning is to comprehend both the Eastern Orthodox faith and Dostoevsky’s greatest novel. We can best approach the meaning of this song through following the connection between the Orthodox funeral services and the crucifixion of Christ. An elder is one who takes your soul, your will into his soul and into his will.
Top 15 Science Fiction Book Series Books Nothing is better than finishing a brilliant science fiction novel knowing that it is only the first in a series. Some of the greatest minds in sci-fi have used the series format to create complex and thrilling universes for their story characters to exist in, while others have created dystopian (and utopian) future environments on earth. This list takes the best of the science fiction series genre and attempts to rank them – a difficult (and obviously subjective) task. For your reading pleasure, here are the 15 greatest science fiction book series. Vorkosigan Saga Lois McMaster Bujold The bulk of the Vorkosigan Saga concerns Miles Vorkosigan, a disabled aristocrat from the planet Barrayar whose entire life is a challenge to the prejudices of his native planet against “mutants”. Wikipedia | Amazon The Book of the New Sun Gene Wolfe Wikipedia | Amazon Hyperion Cantos Dan Simmons Simmons’ Cantos is one of the most well known science fiction series of the last two decades. Wikipedia | Amazon
Afterword to The Brothers Karamozov | Author Sara Paretsky A portrait of Dostoevsky hangs in my living room, drawn from photographs by my stepson Philip: Dostoevsky is his favorite writer, The Brothers Karamazov his favorite novel. The writer’s deep-set eyes are brooding, even forbidding; as I read and re-read Karamazov, and realized how little fit I am to discuss it, I felt his gaze scorching me for my impudence in taking on the task. I don’t read Russian. I don’t know much about Russian political and literary history, or about the Orthodox faith or Pushkin—Dostoevsky’s own favorite writer—and all these play a prominent role in The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky grew up with a passion for literature. He resigned his military commission because his duties included flogging malefactors in the ranks, and he loathed corporal punishment, especially the excesses used in Russian peasant justice—as he makes clear in many places in Karamazov. Like other 19th-century Russians, he early grappled with issues of reform and how Russia might be saved.
4 Hour Body Borrowed Fire: The Brothers Karamazov: The digressive narrator Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this “landowner”—for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate—was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. Thus begins The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. And already, we find the great author seeming to break a basic rule, not just of fiction, but of writing in general. The crucial first sentence of the all-important first paragraph of this gigundous book, which we are about to commit ourselves to for the next, I dunno, thirty months--this sentence is misleading. So, fine.
The Stars My Destination The Stars My Destination is a science fiction novel by Alfred Bester. Originally serialized in Galaxy magazine in four parts beginning with the October 1956 issue,[1] it first appeared in book form in the United Kingdom as Tiger! Tiger! – after William Blake's poem "The Tyger", the first verse of which is printed as the first page of the novel[2] – and the book remains widely known under that title in markets where this edition was circulated. A working title for the novel was Hell's My Destination,[3] and it was also associated with the name The Burning Spear. Background and influences[edit] The Stars My Destination anticipated many of the staples of the later cyberpunk movement, for instance the megacorporations as powerful as governments, a dark overall vision of the future and the cybernetic enhancement of the body. Terminology and allusions[edit] The title "The Stars My Destination" appears in a quatrain quoted by Foyle twice during the book. Gully Foyle is my name Plot[edit]
A Karamazov Companion: Commentary on the Genesis, Language, and Style of ... - Victor Terras Н. А. Некрасов. О погоде. Текст произведения. <Часть первая>. II. До сумерек Ветер что-то удушлив не в меру, В нем зловещая нота звучит, Всё холеру — холеру — холеру — Тиф и всякую немочь сулит! Все больны, торжествует аптека И варит свои зелья гуртом; В целом городе нет человека, В ком бы желчь не кипела ключом; Муж, супругою страстно любимый, В этот день не понравится ей, И преступник, сегодня судимый, Вдвое больше получит плетей. Всюду встретишь жестокую сцену, — Полицейский, не в меру сердит, Тесаком, как в гранитную стену, В спину бедного Ваньки стучит. Чу! Под жестокой рукой человека Чуть жива, безобразно тоща, Надрывается лошадь-калека, Непосильную ношу влача. Я горячим рожден патриотом, Я весьма терпеливо стою, Если войско, несметное счетом, Переходит дорогу мою. Прибывает толпа ожидающих, Сколько дрожек, колясок, карет! Полно ждать! Я, продрогнув, домой побежал.