A carnival of technology

Chris Lumens is setting up a new death pact for November, this time reading Dostoevsky’s Demons. I think this a good choice. It follows the theme set with Gravity’s Rainbow of exploring reality through a lens magnifying each detail to the point of absurdity, plus it’s really long. And it’s a classic, so we can pretend we’re learning something.

One thing that makes me uneasy is that it wasn’t written in English. I don’t have anything particular against foreign people, but reading books outside of my own language makes me fear that I’m going to miss some subtleties of the original. I’m going to be at the mercy of the translator. I don’t think I’ll be able to learn Russian in three days, so oh well.