Quarantine was the best time to dive into The Brothers Karamazov | Self Isolation Reading Vlog 5

hello everyone I am Reesha and this is for the love of classics! welcome to another reading vlog. I hope you're all doing well wherever you are in the world. it is almost the last week of June and it has now been four months since we are self isolating. I feel like this time had its ups and downs and I think this is self-isolation reading vlog number five. As you guys already know, I am participating in social distancing read along which is hosted by Hemingway to Dostoyevsky on Instagram for the

brothers karamazov by a Fyodor Dostoevsky and I have been reading this thousand; almost thousand, page long book for almost a month now. I've started part four of the book which is the last part of the book, so I'm just left with 300 pages of this book and this book has been such a roller coaster ride! I also moved my bookshelf from right over there to here. I'm going to insert a montage of me reorganizing my bookshelf because I was bored and since I had moved my bookshelf, I thought it would

be a good time to reshuffle books, just for fun, I feel like every time I reorganize my bookshelf, I find books which I had almost forgotten existed. it's also a great time to leaf through books which I have already read and look at some of the passages I have highlighted and enjoyed previously. So as most of you guys already know Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian writer. he was born in the year 1821 and he died in 1881. so he wrote in the 19th century. I have already read a c\Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Gambler by him this book was published one year before Dostoevsky died, so it was published in the year 1880. I'm absolutely loving this book! I'm enjoying it more than I enjoyed Crime and Punishment and the Gambler and I really did enjoy Crime and Punishment alot, so that is saying something. so I realized I never mentioned much about The Brothers Karamazov in my previous vlogs and I do want to share what I feel about this book; so in the beginning of the book we a

re introduced to a character called Fyodor Karamazov who is a land owner; he has three sons the oldest son; Dmitri, is from his first wife, while his two younger sons Ivan and Mitya, are from his second wife. both his wives have passed away and he never had a strong bond with any of his sons. Fyodor Karamazov is the most selfish and brutal characte;r he has an unhealthy relationship with his sons, he never cared for them a bit. these three sons were taken care of by his servant and by their rela

tives from their mother's side. he never took any interest in their upbringing and even now as he has grown older and his sons are young men, he doesn't care for them and he makes fun of them. he just is a very selfish father and doesn't care about anybody but himself. so the first son Dimitri was in the Russian army and he has now given up his post, he is engaged to this intelligent, beautiful woman Katerina; I hope I'm pronouncing these names correctly because I do try to learn their pronuncia

tions but it does get mixed up at times. her fiance Katerina is this amazing, brilliant, intelligent girl. Dmitri shares a lot of characteristics with his father; he does not care for consequences, he seems selfish at times. although he is engaged to Katerina but he is madly in love with Grushenka, another character we get introduced to during the first part of the story. so the second son Ivan; is an intellectual and he's a pretty cool character. he seems to be the sensible person in this whole

family. in the second part of the book; the two younger brothers have a philosophical, deep conversation and we get to know Ivan a little bit better. he's a thinker. he talks a lot about religion , atheism, immorality, how people are cruel in this world, how helpless we all are in the face of cruelty. so far I am absolutely in love with his character, the youngest brother is I think almost twenty years old, when the story starts, he decides to become a monk. he joins the monastery near his town

. so that is why there are a lot of chapters dedicated to religious discussions because he interacts with these priests and monks. so that's pretty much how it is with these three brothers and then there is also a fourth character; there is gossip in the town that he is an illegitimate son of Fyodor Karamazov; he lives as a servant; a cook, in Fyodor's house he seems to have a very strong personality. his name is Smerdyakov; he has epileptic fits all the time, he's a very dark and mysterious cha

racter. so what's great about the brothers karamazov is that we go in deep with each character. Dostoyevsky explores pros and cons of everything, every thought that passes through these characters heads. if you like books and novels which are extremely character driven then this is definitely the book you should pick up. I know many people have given up on The Brothers Karamazov. it has been on many people's DNF; did not finish list but I am absolutely loving it and so far. I feel like it's a fi

ve star read for me. I really want to finish this book in a day or two but I also do not want to rush through it because I am devouring every sentence, every paragraph. there are so many amazing passages in this book which I am absolutely loving. as I am reading Dostoyevsky I feel like I have forgotten Leo Tolstoy because his books were more of a social documentary because there were so many characters so much was happening but in Dostoyevsky's book; the p lot line of the story is not very long

but there's a lot of analysis about characters, which just makes him stand apart from other Russian authors I have read. I also visited a bookshop again! last month I visited an old bookshop and I couldn't find many good classics there, so I decided to go to Kinokuniya which is the biggest bookshop in Dubai; I think they started from Japan because there's a huge collection of Japanese books there but I did find some good classics and I bought them. I really do need to stop buying more books. I c

an't stop, I can't stop. Buying books just makes me so happy! Guys, the new penguin black spines are going to have different penguin symbols, Look at the difference! how many of you are as annoyed as I am? as I mentioned in my last vlog, I got a book marriage by Susan Ferrier, so I started reading Marriage by Susan Ferrier and I am on page number 110 now. Susan Ferrier is a Scottish author, she was a contemporary of Jane Austen. this book was published in the year 1880. I am having such an amaz

ing time reading this book; I feel like I can finish it in one day but I just don't want to do that because I want to save it for Jane Austen's July and I think I can take it as far as the first day of July, at least so I can count it for one of the challenges it's definitely an easier read as compared to Jane Austen, who was her contemporary because her chapters are smaller. One of the good things about this book is that every chapter has a short poem or verse, in the beginning which is like a

summary of what will happen in the chapter. George Eliot did a similar thing in Middlemarch, it's always so much fun to guess what the wverse means because it's going to tell you what will happen in the chapter and then you read the chapter and you realize how the verse was relevant to that chapter. in the beginning, I felt that her writing was a bit choppy, the sentences were small and blunt but as I have continued with book I have gotten used to her writing style. So the story is about Lady Ju

liana, she is a daughter of some bigshot aristocratic guy in England. in the first chapter of the book lady Juliana's father tells her that he wants her to marry this rich but old and ugly guy. Lady Juliana seems to be okay with it for a while but she really likes this other guy; he's a handsome young soldier but he's penniless. she, however, decides to elope with him and they get married. once they are married, they have basically nothing to live on. her husband takes her to his homeland Scotla

nd and lady Juliana who was used to the luxurious life in England is devastated to find out that she has to live in Scotland. she thinks her husband has been very cruel to her, to bring her to such a place. she is being super dramatic about the whole situation, she wants to go back, no matter what. she doesn't care about anything, she hates it there. there are some really funny quotes in this book which are in parallel to Jane Austen's sense of humor, "No Kingdom can maintain two kings, so no fa

mily can admit of two sensible women. Miss Jackie, the senior of the trio, was what is reckoned a very sensible woman, which generally means a very disagreeable, obstinate, illiberal director of all men, women and children; a sort of Superintendent of all actions, time and place, with unquestioned authority to arreign, judge and condemn upon the statues of her own supposed sense." so I thought that was really funny and true as well, she discusses what is improper, what is proper. how one needs t

o be patient, for example: Mrs. Douglas, who is lady Juliana's sister-in-law, asked her to be patient and tells her that; "I possess health peace of mind and affections of a worthy husband and I should be very undeserving of these blessings were I to give up to useless regrets or indulge in impious repining s because my happiness might once have been more perfect and still admits of improvement." so I'm really enjoying this book and I'm going to save the last hundred pages or so for Jane Austen

July which I'm going to be filming a TBR for soon, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do all the challenges but I think it's going to be a lot of fun reading Jane Austen with everyone in the month of July. So as I'm reaching the end of the Brothers Karamazov, I was thinking about my next read; what should it be? and I think I might have mentioned that after watching the movie Troy, I really wanted to read The Iliad by Homer but as I have never read any ancient literature before I wasn't sur

e how I would be able to do that. So the Iliad is a poem; it's almost 600 pages long, Homer to whom the Iliad is attributed is thought to have been written around 800 to 900 BC. So I found out about an Illiad read along hosted by bookish in CT on Instagram, so this read along is starting from June 1st through August 24th, they're planning to read two books a week. they're having a group chat with discussions which is really helpful for me because I'm like a novice; I have no clue about the Iliad

and many of the people in the group have already read Iliad a couple of times and they are now trying out different translations. I wasn't even sure which translation I had! I think somebody mentioned that the Collins classics translation is by Fitzgerald. I'm going to start reading this once I finish the Brothers Karamazov and I think the Iliad and Mansfield Park will be two of the major books I read for the month of July. that's the plan for now but we'll see how it goes... So in the beginnin

g of the year I decided to read 40 classics in the year 2020, for the classics community challenged by Lucy, so far I've read 11 classics and even if I managed to read only 20, which would be half the amount I challenged myself to read, I think, it would be absolutely brilliant because when I was setting up myself to read 40 classics, I knew it would be very hard even if I read 20, that would be pretty amazing and I will be happy with myself. So I thought I will give you guys an update about my

husband's reading, he has finished Animal Farm by George Orwell. I gave this to him as a present; I thought he might enjoy this. he has given this book a three star rating and I have given this book a five star rating; I thought this was absolutely brilliant and I asked him why he has given this a three star rating? he said he did not enjoy it as much because it was all about the animals and he would have rather enjoyed it if it was a nonfiction about the Russian Revolution. Anyways it was worth

a try; so now he has started reading The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli because he has heard me praise it a lot in the last couple of months and now I'm not sure whether he'll enjoy it either because I was so sure he would love Animal Farm and he didn't. I think he would enjoy nonfiction about the history of the world in general, just like a precise, concise history; I'm not sure which book would do that job. Hi guys! I thought I would do a quick reading update before I ended this vlog, so I hav

e finished reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky! I absolutely loved this book! this is definitely a new favorite! It is going right next to Middlemarch! I absolutely loved this! 5 out of 5 star! so happy I read it! it took me almost two months to finish this but it was definitely worth it! I am still reading Marriage by Susan Ferrier. Today is second July and I'm going to continue reading this for Jane Austen July 2020. I haven't started reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen yet

but I'm really looking forward to it, I hope you guys enjoyed this reading vlog, I'm going to be reading Jane Austen in the next reading vlog so I'm going to see you all there!