The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment effectively read themselves. They can't be put down. Only with exceptional discipline and great difficulty could

The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment effectively read themselves. They can't be put down. Only with exceptional discipline and great difficulty could one "take it slow," and stop for note-taking. I don't know who reads novels like that. Reading them, time stops, and you return to your life about a week later. Notes From Underground isn't easy, but it is short. The Idiot and The Possessed (Demons, The Devils), if even 100 pages can be completed, are impossible to finish. I am unaware of anyone who has read Dostoyevski's first three novels, The Village of Stepanchikovo, Humilated and Insulted, or The House of the Dead, so the assumption is they are either illegible or inscrutable, the result being they can't be read.