Rereading Crime and Punishment

A view of Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg (1876)
by Petr Petrovich Vereshchagin.

Does the weather ever put you in the mood for certain books? Winter always makes me think I should be reading some Russian novel or something by Kafka. I've been thinking for years I should reread Crime and Punishment. I first read it long ago when I was in high school. (Yes, it was assigned reading.) Was it the setting or the characters that so grabbed my attention? I don't know, but it was one of those books that fueled my lifelong love of reading. A sense of place is important to me in a book. I like to be transported somewhere alien and lose myself in the sights and sounds of a foreign place. Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg feels very real to me, like I've lived in those cramped garrets. And somehow Dostoyevsky makes me feel compassion for characters that I would find reprehensible if I ever met them.

So, I started rereading it a few days ago. It was as good as I remembered and I let the story envelop me, like curling up under warm blankets on a winter night, which is an odd metaphor because the story opens during the hottest part of the summer. Many readers don't like the long (we're talking page-length) sections of dialogue. It's a far cry from modern novels. I'm amazed that Dostoyevsky can pull it off. I like to think of that style not as characters talking in monologues but of multiple narrators, each one telling a story in their particular voice.

I'm taking a leisurely stroll through the novel as I read other books and stories on the side. I already know what's going to happen. I saw The Castle on my bookshelf the other day. I plan to dive into Kafka's world after I finish with Dostoyevsky's.

Anyone else planning to reread a favorite book or two this year?