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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4934.The_Brothers_Karamazov?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Brothers Karamazov" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1203179283m/4934.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4934.The_Brothers_Karamazov?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Brothers Karamazov</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3356.Fyodor_Dostoevsky">Fyodor Dostoevsky</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/13732855?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>"Everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov" <br/>~Kurt Vonnegut <br/> <br/>Okay, it took me a few days to get into it, but once I did it was a page turner. I love this book, although it's at times a big, beautiful mess. There are so many themes going on, and each character has every quality under the sun, that I don't really feel equal to wirting a little capsule review. Here are some of the basic themes I took from it: everyone is both guilty and innocent; trying to solve the question of God with logic is futile; the concept of justice is absurd; in the end love is the only real truth. I became even more smitten with the book when I read a little background on it, and found that after the author's own child (Alyosha) died during the writing of the book, Dostoyevsky took solace in the company of a monk whom Zossima is modelled after - knowing this tied some of the seemingly irrelevant chapters together. The ideas behind Brothers Karamozov are deeper than Tolstoy's, and more life-affirming than Dostoyevsky's own Crime and Punishment. I really liked the loose ending, and the closing scene with Alyosha and the little boys. <br/> <br/>Here's my favorite passage, spoken by Ivan the cynic to Alyosha the angelic young monk. <br/> <br/> <br/>"...I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one's heart prizes them... <br/> <br/>I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most precious graveyard, that's what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I'm convinced in my heart that it's long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky -- that's all it is. It's not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with one's stomach..." <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/277477?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>