A Reader’s Spark

I’m thankful I didn’t read Wuthering Heights in junior high, when I was obsessed with classics like Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. Back then, I might have loved the story, but I could never understand its profound emotions. Now, it draws me into its haunting mood so deeply that I can hardly break away. Truly a great book, one that reveals its beauty with life’s hindsight.

Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is more than a great novel; it is a work that leaves an indelible mark on every reader who delves into its pages. Those who read it are never the same person they were before, their perspective shaped and enriched by Tolstoy’s profound storytelling. Single-handedly, this masterpiece cements Tolstoy’s place at the very summit of world literature, an immortal giant on the Olympus of literary greats.

One Anna Karenina can beat ten relationship columns. The world will always have a Kitty—pure and sweet; a Dolly—kept afloat by everyday warmth; and an Anna—drunk on desire. Men are a roll of the dice, and so is marriage.

First, be sincere. Second, be kind. Third, may we never forget one another.
After closing The Brothers Karamazov, these words feel less like advice and more like a quiet vow. In a world torn between faith and doubt, reason and passion, they are the simplest truths the novel leaves in our hands. To live honestly, to treat others with mercy, and to remember each other—this, perhaps, is Dostoevsky’s final answer to the chaos of being human.