Novel By Leo Tolstoy Novels & Stories

It sank even deeper but I tried not to show it. "Why are you telling me? You usually don't." He was quiet, till he breathed. "I don't know," before his footsteps got entirely erased. * * * * My fingers trailed across the spine of the books and I stopped on a white covered book. I pull it out of the shelf and hold it in both hands. "Crime and Punishment," I read aloud before gazing down at the author's name. "Fyodor Dos-tos-to-eeev-evsky?" I squint my eyes. "Fyodor Dostoevsky!"

The cover wasn’t familiar, but it was also scuffed and torn. A shudder rolled through me at the book’s mistreatment, but by the many dog-eared pages, it was much loved. “Tolstoy?” I asked as I read the author’s name. In my hands was one of Tolstoy’s greatest novels, and one I could admit I’d never read—War and Peace. I looked up at him but he was back in his shadow, talking to Marco, though his eyes never left me. I flipped open the pages, happy to have something to read again, since my unfinished book was somewhere in my bag that they’d done who knows what with. I greatly missed reading and was desperate for anything to help get my head out of my present situation.

image he worked so hard to maintain. I closed the closet, still grinning, and wandered into his bedroom. On his nightstand I found more books, all by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, The Idiot, White Nights. I picked one up and flipped through it. The pages were worn, corners folded and some lines underlined. He wasn't just pretending to like this stuff, he really was a superfan of Russian literature. I didn't believe it when he first told me, but now I believed it without a doubt.

The only connection that I had with life and my existence on earth was pain. I felt numb without the pain, felt nothingness, at least the pain made me feel like something, it made me feel a little, like other humans. Without the pain, I was totally detached from reality, totally removed from the realm where normal people lived. He took a copy of the book he had been reading and turned the back page to write something. It was a copy of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. A modernist novel that we were currently reading. His copy wasn’t brand new, it had dog pages, had been read over and over again. With some lines underlined.

There were not much dust alongside the shelves which meant Anton did care about them. “You told me you are a fan of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy right? I went here the other day and found this.” He pulled out the first edition, hard cover print of Anna Karenina in three volumes, three books completed with the cards and everything. It was wrapped in a protective box to shield it. When Ana saw it, her eyes widened.

I left Aaron for the meantime on the part where the fountain pens are to go to the novel section. Since I saw Sophie Lark's Brutal Prince on TikTok's recommendation, people who have read this say that it has a strong female lead. I enjoy books of that genre, therefore I may be interested in reading it. I looked at the shelves. I also picked up a book and read the synopsis on the back when Aaron came to me here. "You like reading books?" he asked. I turned my eyes on him, "Uh, sometimes. If I'm interested in the plot," I answered.