Edyta Szalek: A Dream of the Green Eyelids (Sen Zielonych Powiek)

Isn’t it a guilty pleasure to tuck yourself in a blanket on a sofa with a cup of nice tea on a pleasant evening with a good book. It is my guilty pleasure at least. And some books make you just re-fill that cup of tea until the sunrise the next morning. This is one of them.

The story is nice and engaging – it’s a story of a woman in her mid-thirties I’d say who is reasonably successful in her job in a clothes production company. A story that could probably describe the lives of most of us. But the story isn’t what’s the most important here. It’s the feelings and emotions that accompany it in every step of the way. That different point of view, the honesty of opinions and the strength to talk about things that are not always considered “normal” in public terms make it a distinctively nice read when compared to other books of that type (I mean women literature – though this term sounds a bit demeaning for this book).

I love books that you just can’t put away and that you reach for with a great sense of pleasure and excitement and this is definitely one of them. The only downside of it is that it ends and I am now worried the next book I read won’t be as exciting…

My rating: YYYYY

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment

I am a bit disappointed I didn’t read this book earlier. Why didn’t anyone recommend it to me? Or did they and I just ignored them as it seems like one of those books that you have to read at school. I was never a big fan of “have-to’s” so maybe that’s why.

It was a really enjoyable experience to get this old edition of the book from my mom’s shelf (from 1974) with its brownish pages and the smell of dust adding to the experience of the times it describes. You can’t not like Raskolnikov as a character, despite the brutal crime he committed. Though I have to admit, killing two women with an axe seemed a bit comical to me. I suppose that could simply be due to all the more brutal crimes we’re used to seeing in movies and on TV nowadays.

The journey Raskolnikov goes on to after the crime is a brilliant description of human’s mind, an amazing journey through thoughts, emotions and feelings of one person put brilliantly and eloquently on paper. Dostoyevsky treats us to not only a great study of human nature but does it with a great dose of humour by bringing a whole variety of characters into play.

Raskolnikov’s punishment is long and exhausting. And you, as a reader, feel that exhaustion yourself and want to end it by giving yourself in, the sooner the better. Though there were many moments when I thought – why not just let it go and get away with it if no one has any evidence against me? Does that mean I have a murderer inside me?

My rating: YYYYY