Is Thanksgiving the biggest hypocritical farce of a holiday ? It ' s so ironic that people are gearing up for Thanksgiving when Native Americans are being tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets and water hoses as we speak . <| sep |> I second this . I also recommend at least perusing Joseph Frank ' s biography of Dostoevsky , or at least perusing the appropriate volume since it ' s a fivevolume monstrosity even the singlevolume abridgement is 1000 pages long . Frank argues that Dostoevsky can ' t be understood without some understanding of his socialpolitical context , so he outlines this context and devotes chapters to Dostoevsky ' s major works . I ' ve been reading the abridged biography and rereading the major works Notes , CP , the Idiot , Demons , The Bros . as they come up in its chronology , and I ' m finding it to be incredibly enlightening . Frank ' s interpretations are sharp and persuasive , but somehow manage not to override my own personal interpretations . If you like Dostoevsky but have struggled with him , as I and many other readers also have , I think this is your ticket . Read the Brothers Karamazov and maybe check out Vol . 5 of Frank ' s bio from the library which includes like six chapters devoted to the Bros . to read parallel to it .