I haven’t read them all. By that I mean I haven’t read War and Peace. I think I’ve read the first 50 pages a million times or so, and the first 100 pages two or three times. I don’t read much these days due to unlimited short form videos turning my brain to mush, but I do dream of reading it. What would my unborn son think if he saw this on my bookshelf and knew I hadn’t read it but meant to. He would say “man up dad”. Or he would internalize that it’s okay to say you want to do something, but just do nothing instead. The horror.
Anna Karenina has to be the greatest novel of all time, right? I had thought the Brothers Karamazov was an all encompassing treatise on the human condition, but no! Does it touch love in this way? The core of Levin’s plight is what it means to be human? I have two pages on this book on my wall, framed. A cheap frame, but effort was involved nonetheless.
Crime and Punishment as I mentioned makes you want to kill yourself for 200 pages. This is the original Final Fantasy XIII’s “it gets good after 20 hours”. They’re not a bad 200 pages. Just man… It feels like a very different story at the end, and I guess if I looked it up, it may say it was published in bits and perhaps over a long period of time. The man talking about his daughter, about how he ruined his family… was rough.
The Brothers Karamazov has the Spanish Inquisition chapter and the chapter where Ivan talks to the devil. Two very powerful chapters. Each brother took on a characteristic of man to me (I’m not sure if that’s the consensus, I forgot what the wikipedia page said) and the bastard is man, shit-stained and all. This has to be the second greatest novel ever.
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Rosshalde is my first early Hesse book. The child’s descent into sickness is brilliant.
The Magus (barely seen) is a book I hope and pray never gets found by the douchebags, because I fear they would love it. That would be more painful than when some Gen Z Tiktoker called Pinkerton “Incel bullshit”. Leave The Magus alone. Stay away.
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I like Penguin’s clothbound series. Makes me feel like a big man.
Klingsor's First Winter 