Top Ten Favorite Books, #9: Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
“I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man.” It rolls off the tongue like a Tale of Two Cities (It was the best of times, it was the worst of times) if Dickens weren’t being paid by the word. The neurotic narrator, prone to hyperbole and outbursts of bitterness, is weirdly relatable. I’m not sure who did the translation I own, but “There I stood, crushed and annihilated” is a byword in this household.