Reviews

MOST LOVED BOOK

My most loved text is definitely ‘Crime and Punishment’ written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The story is about a former university student Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, who was forced to quit university because he spent all his money. Because of that, he was forced to live in a small flat, which really bruised his ego as he thinks of himself very highly. Bankruptcy pushed him to the point where he had to sell his dead father’s watch, for which he expected to get a lot of money, but unfortunately, he only got a few roubles for it, which bruised his ego even more. So the lack of money pushed him to committing a serious crime – murder. Raskolnikov created a very detailed plan and murdered the woman who bought his precious watch from him. Unfortunately, the woman’s sister came into the room at the same time, so Raskolnikov ended up killing her as well. The whole action takes place in the very first 100 pages of the book, the rest of the book is about his emotions, intentions and feelings after the crime. At the end, he ends up confessing to the police anyway, even though he was hesitating for so long. 

The thing I like most about this book are the protagonist’s monologues, which are full of doubts, hesitations and very complicated intentions. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if Raskolnikov is a positive or a negative character, because some of his actions were really kind, apart from the killings.

MOST HATED BOOK

I just couldn’t stand reading ‘The Forest of the Gods’ by Balys Sruoga. This book is based on real facts happening in the XX century during the WWII. It’s basically a diary of one of the prisoners that was sent into a concentration camp in Auschwitz.  The main character is the author himself, telling stories about the prisoners and other people in the camp. The atmosphere of the story is so dark, it makes you feel horrible as you’re reading it. I don’t think that the majority of people could enjoy reading about how men kill each other in prison straight up or beat each other to death. For example, if a fight happens in the camp, none of the staff cares about it. They just let the weak ones get beaten up to dead and some of the higher-ups even enjoy watching it happen. The author tried to implement some sarcasm as well as irony to soften the brutal stories, but it still didn’t convince me it was a worth-to-read book, even if the ironic bits were constructed nicely. I guess I could say that grotesque is really not my thing. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy WWII books, though.