Comment by SugarReflex

I think the problem with Russian names in particular is that a Russian name has three parts (e.g. Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky) and different parts get used in different contexts, depending on who's speaking, level of familiarity and so on. So it's like in an English novel where someone might be referred to as Smith by the narrator but John in dialogue, but with an extra 50%, at least, of confusion.

The obscure Russian nicknames! How is anybody supposed to know without being told that Sasha and Alexander are the same guy? (I do realize that while some English nicknames like Johnny for John are pretty self-explanatory, other like Jack for John or Dick for Richard are as opaque to foreigners as Alexander/Sasha)

I haven't read any Dostoyevsky since high school, and don't remember it at all, but I'd imagine it has to do with nicknames.

A non-Russian speaker is going to be confused when the same character is referred to as both Alexander and Sasha, for example, and will think they're different people.

Mostly Southern Chinese or Hong Kong.

Any teenager IMO. I sometimes wonder how I got through high school English. Whether it was The Great Gatsby or Candide or King Lear or The Crucible or Moby Dick it was all so tedious and utterly, utterly boring. And this was well before the internet; home computers were just starting to become popular but almost nobody was online yet.

I did find Vonnegut and a small handful of others to be more engaging.

I have tried to break into the brothers K two or three times and it’s just been so difficult for some reason. I know it’s kind of a joke at this point, but keeping track of all of the names is just so dizzying and distracting.

Have you tried audiobooks?

You just have to build a habit. Nothing happens unless it becomes habitual.

Of course, that "just" is doing a lot. I'm saying it's doable, not that it's easy.

A thought but maybe switch to the Idiot instead. I think of all the Dostoyevsky works the Brothers is the least enjoyable one. Keep it to the end or else it may suffocate your interest and prevent you from reading some of his greater works.

Nothing silly about it. That’s a very common thing people have to get used to with Russian literature. People have several names they go by as well as nickname variations of those names, and different people based on familiarity will use different ones. So you can have a single character referred to by 3-4 different names in a single work! It also doesn’t help if one of their nicknames resembles somebody else’s name lol

have you tried 'A hero of our time' by Lermontov. Upon reading it, I felt really sorry the author died an early death. I have not felt like that about any other European author.

I'm an Idiot man, myself

Not really. The problem with the names in Dostoyevsky (and Russian literature more generally) isn’t that the names on their own are difficult to remember, it is that all names also have familiar forms, which are sometimes very different from the formal name. On page you get introduced to a character named Alexander, a few pages later the text talks about Sasha. For non-native speakers, it’s hard to guess that it’s the same person. An e-reader’s search function isn’t going to make this problem disappear.

Try a different translation.

First time I started to read it, it was a slog and I didn’t get far.

Did a bit of research on translations and chose another one (can’t recall the exact translator).

The 2nd attempt’s translation used more contemporary language, which made it much more understandable and got through it.

If you are going to read in English, I can recommend the translation by Oliver Ready

I was never in the army, and I still enjoyed and would recommend Catch 22 regardless. It (sadly) applies to the goofiness of companies and bureaucracies more broadly.

That said, being in the army might add an additional level of apprecation but it's a good book regardless.

Look at this hotshot who can't relate to massive losers!

/j