[pjungwir]

Came here to recommend Brothers Karamazov and also add David Copperfield. I've read Dickens was a favorite of Dostoevsky, and David Copperfield has characters you'll remember all your life. It is especially good to read as you're setting out on life, e.g. halfway through college.

One story I've heard about David Copperfield: in Russian monasteries, there are abbots who forbid novices from reading any spiritual literature until they've first read David Copperfield, because while the goal of the monastic life is to become more like God, first you have to become human.

For the Russians, especially Dostoevsky, if there is a translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, that's the one to pick. It makes a huge difference.

As a college senior, after devouring pretty much all of Dostoevsky, I read Anna Karenina largely because in On Moral Fiction it is John Gardner's favorite example of a great novel---and it was so boring. Now that I'm 38 I think often of re-reading it, if I can work up the gumption. I'm glad to hear you found it not so heavy.

A favorite English professor in his 60s told me he was still re-reading Crime and Punishment, but Brothers Karamazov didn't speak to him anymore, and he felt it was a young man's book. I've been trying for 15+ years to decide if I agree.