I came across a passage from The Brothers Karamazov (in an Elden Ring lore video lol) that I enjoyed so I have been considering reading it. I’m not particularly great at interpreting literature and I also read a bit slowly, so I wasn’t sure if I would be better off starting with something shorter and simpler that he wrote. The passage in the video, a conversation between Ivan and Alyosha (mostly Ivan recounting stories of the suffering of children) seemed fairly straightforward to me, but I don’t know about the rest of the book.
Also I see there are a number of different English translations available for his works, are any of them particularly good or bad?
also i keep thinking of stuff sorry, i don't think there would be anything wrong with just reading part of a book, i'm pretty sure there are places where you can find a particular episode or relatively self-contained chapter taken out of one of the really long books which could give you an idea of it. Maybe like an anthology of russian literature or something that needs to include dostoyevsky but can't have like the entirity of BK. Also you could just read the second part of Notes from Underground, it would probably be fine cause the first part is just a long rant and the second part is the actual narrative.
nooo you have to read the entirity of every book nah man thats foolish i played all the way through dark souls 1 and decided i didnt care about finishing the game so i never tried to beat gwyn. literally do what you want