Just finished War and Peace about a week ago. It took me a month, and that month included a lot of long plane flights. But yes, I scored many literary-machismo points with myself for getting through the thing. And I actually liked it, for the most part, though it could have been a couple hundred pages shorter without any significant loss.
I would definitely recommend starting with Anna Karenina -- I read that one a couple years ago and LOVED it. It's 500 pages shorter than W&P, but more importantly, it's more novel-ish. W&P was so ambitious, like he was deliberately trying to write a culture-defining epic and a philosophical treatise on war and history in addition to a novel. AK is much more readable.
Which Dostoyevsky? I read Crime & Punishment and Notes from Underground in college, and remember really liking both, but that was quite a while ago now...
no subject
I would definitely recommend starting with Anna Karenina -- I read that one a couple years ago and LOVED it. It's 500 pages shorter than W&P, but more importantly, it's more novel-ish. W&P was so ambitious, like he was deliberately trying to write a culture-defining epic and a philosophical treatise on war and history in addition to a novel. AK is much more readable.
Which Dostoyevsky? I read Crime & Punishment and Notes from Underground in college, and remember really liking both, but that was quite a while ago now...