Conrad

I've been reading a lot recently - the upside of commuting by train is the time in which all you can do is read, write, or scrawl teaching notes. (The downsides are too numerous and well-known to mention.)

Among other things I've reread Heart of Darkness and read various other Conrad stories for the first time - Youth, Typhoon and now The Secret Sharer - in awful Dover Thrift editions with crammed type and no notes. You hardly notice such distractions when the main event is so good. Must give Lord Jim a go.

I'm also reading Dostoevsky's Poor People, his first published novel (written before prison and exile). The style is not fully developed, and in the first 30 pages or so, I occasionally found myself what on earth was going on - then I remembered it was Dostoevsky I was reading, and that that was the general idea...