Crime and Punishment

I finally have an answer to that age old question “What is your favorite book?” I finished C&P about a week ago, and seriously have never read anything else as good. (The Bible being an exception, but for me the Bible stands by itself in a unique category)
I’ve read most of Brothers Karamazov, so I even have another work by Dostoevsky to compare it with, and it was interesting to see that some of the themes were the same. But in this case, both the situation and the characters were far more compelling, far more gripping, than in Brothers K. This story is also more tightly focused in terms of structure, which I like.
It would be difficult for me to talk about all the things I like about this book without having this entry turn into a short novel of its own. Fundamentally for me, it was about the characters, major and minor, who truly lived inside my mind, of the power of the writing to put you in the scenes and settings he creates, to make you FEEL what it is the characters are feeling, his way with words and creating conversations through his writing, in the potent, almost violent intersection of Christ and the Bible among the poverty and ruins of these desperate people’s lives and the way that these characters wrestle and do battle with him, to the book’s final, extremely satisfying conclusion, that may be the best ending to a story I’ve ever read, at least in terms of my own personal taste.
No one should leave college without reading this book. If you’re out of college and haven’t read it, read it. If you have read it, read it again. Done.