What I've read - February 2019.

Hello, fellow Steemians! Long time, no read - but I'm here now to fix it. I've made a decision to write about books I've read in a particular month at the end of it. I hope I can stick to it for a long time, and I hope I will read plenty of great books during this time. I will try not to spoil any of them, and I'm not really into paraphrasing what I've read, but maybe I can motivate you to read some of them.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

During his life Dostoevsky wrote five novels - The Brothers Karamazov is one of them. So far I've read only his Crime and punishment when I was at high-school and I kinda liked it, although I think I should read it again because the depth of his novels is not something a 17-year old me was capable of grasping. To be honest - neither is 23-year old me but I'm certainly better at it. Dostoevsky's novels are unparalleled at their psychological depth and I would recommend everyone to read at least some of Dostoevsky's work before they die.

The plot starts with a bit of history of Karamazov brothers, their father Fyodor Pavlovich and his two wives with whom he has three sons - Dmitri, Ivan, and Alexei aka Alyosha. His oldest son Dimitri is like his father in some ways - he is a hedonist, likes to spend large amounts of money on alcohol, women and all kinds of entertainment. His second son Ivan is the intellectual and bookish one, very good at arguments. Dostoevsky uses Ivan to form his iron man argument against the Christian idea of God. Ivan is a materialist, rationalist, in my opinion, he is the "Raskolnikov" of the three brothers, in his view "everything is permitted", and if God exists he does not accept him and the world he created. The story about the slave child who got killed because he unintentionally injured an owners dog is one of the reasons why he rejects God. His third son, Alyosha is fundamentally good, religious but not in a way that he can "defend" his faith.

Dostoevsky planned on writing a sequel to this novel, but he sadly died before having an opportunity to do so - nevertheless - The Brothers Karamazov is one of the greatest novels by itself.

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Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days

I watched a 2004 film based on this novel few years ago and the original storyline differs substantially from it, later I found out there were many more films and series based on this book and all of them are more or less different from the book. The storyline in the original follows a rich English gentleman Phileas Fogg who makes a bet with some other members of Reform Club that after the new railway section in India is open - the whole world can be traveled around in 80 days which was a very short time from the standards of 19th century. He takes his newly employed French valet with him and departs from London the same day.

This book is a good representation of the British empire, and I actually made me search for options for traveling to America by boat just to get some idea of how people traveled such long distances before airplanes.