Now reading: Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879) - translated by Constance Garnett (1922) [Goodreads / Goodreads review / Notes]

I don't know anything about this book. Nothing. It was late. I had recently finished the last book I was reading. (Lu Xun, The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun) I wanted to read some more fiction in 2020 because I had been reading more-or-less only nonfiction for the last few years. I didn't want to buy an ebook. I didn't want to pick up a book from the library the next day. That meant: going back to the old 1001 Books to Read Before You Die spreadsheet, picking an old book, and then finding a free copy somewhere on Google Books or the Internet Archive or sometimes a free ebook on Amazon. The Brothers Karamazov is the one I picked.

I expected this book to be just about as interesting as that last paragraph, but 40 or so pages in: it's completely absurd. Not at all what I was expecting--I was really expecting something dusty.

I remember off-handedly that Kurt Vonnegut referred to Dostoevsky, so I looked it up. It was a reference to this book in Slaughterhouse-Five:

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.

Plus a quick link now in my read-later pile: Donald Fiene, "Elements of Dostoevsky in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut", Dostoevsky Studies 2 (1981).