How to get others to read

[Scoundrel]

I would say why bother - it's what you love that matters and the rest is fodder. How are you going to get anyone to do anything that they're not inclined to do already and if it interests you then that is your primary support. I stayed up nearly every night one summer about 20 years ago and what I would do is read and re-read, "Crime and Punishment", and, "The Brothers Karamazov". Brought meaning to my life - I love Dostoyevsky. I simply love him. And I always will and I've never been able to impart that to anyone or really share it with anyone because it is personal  - how can I get anyone to share my deeply personal love for this man and his literature? It seems quite hopeless to me. Read on.

If D's books have had such a positive impact on your life, I can't see how you could say "why bother".  D's books have also had a very positive impact on my life and outlook on things in general, and I'm currently in the process of convincing my close friends who read to check out 'The Idiot'.  I especially am trying to get my novelist sister to read D, so that hopefully his philosophy will rub off, if only a little, in her writing.

[Canerican]

I have tried to span the world and time periods with my readings, so as to get a better grasp of culture. I have read Kokoro to begin understand Japanese culture, I have the Enuma Elish to begin to understand Babylon, parts of the Koran, some Confucius etc. Though the insight you may gain is minor, it is invaluable.

I think that a novelist would  want to read the same simply for the cultural insights and the ways that different cultures view nature, gender, power, and anything else.

Russian literature is an essential for anyone who wants to write.

[tzar]

... I especially am trying to get my novelist sister to read D, so that hopefully his philosophy will rub off, if only a little, in her writing.

omg !...
then you'd better get her to read some Dickens or Victor Hugo .

[Scoundrel]

she's read les miserables and a few by dickens...but she seems to be turned off by russian translations...actually she took four years of Russian in highschool and visited Moscow, but she just doesn't like the translations...I'm gonna change that, with time

[tzar]

... she just doesn't like the translations...

but what's wrong with Constance Garnett's translations ??

[Scoundrel]

shes says that it seems dry, like there's something missing, and I'm sure there is plenty missing, but I'm able to become enthralled by the translations of D...I'm sure eventually I'll make a convert of her....she's actually gonna be in town next weekend, for the "first friday" art festival here in Phoenix, so I gotta hurry up and finish my copy of the Idiot, and force it on her when she's here

[Scoundrel]

by "something missing" I mean that some of the novel was lost in translation between the two very different languages........that said, I can't get enough of D

[kaygal]

notes from the underground is quite short and snappy.