I started with Karamazov, then C&P, then the Idiot. I loved excerpts of Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor, Dimitry's troika ride, any passage with Grushenka) but

I started with Karamazov, then C&P, then the Idiot. I loved excerpts of Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor, Dimitry's troika ride, any passage with Grushenka) but I also found it rough to get through. I really don't think I was ultimately able to appreciate it as a whole. C&P felt much smoother and finally I devoured The Idiot. Those novels felt like night and day compared to Karamazov. With Karamazov, I feel like there is some subtext or context I'm missing and would have loved to have had a companion text or course to help me. When I first Master and Margarita, it came with incredible footnotes, and rereading it again I found I sometimes recalled the footnotes more than the text. I recommended the book to a friend, but their edition didn't have the footnotes so they bounced right off it. Anyway if anyone knows of an edition better than the Penguin Classic of BK I'm all ears.