#My favourite is Dostoyevsky station

[redpredatorforpindoses]

I didn't want to post anything about this dude for a long time like I don't want to look like someone who writes on hype topics but lol look at this underground! I've been there irl, it's pretty much the same as the one in my city (also a big post soviet city), the only difference was that instead of grids (like at 2:33) we have a blank wall and you can't look down at passing trains (for safety).

Russian metro is awesome, also look at stations from other cities and neighbouring countries (google pics).

"Palats Ukraina", Kyiv, Ukraine (Photo from 2010, all the Soviet decorations have now been removed)

"Mayakovskaya", St. Petersburg, Russia

"Moskva", Almaty, Kazakhstan

"Botanicheskaya", Yekaterinburg, Russia

"Lefortovo", Moscow, Russia

"Dostoevskaya", Moscow, Russia

"Alisher Navoiy", Tashkent, Uzbekistan

"Avtovo", St. Petersburg, Russia

"Pyatrowshchyna", Minsk, Belarus

"Belorusskaya", Moscow, Russian

"Zoloti Vorota", Kyiv, Ukraine

[dostoevskya]

ФМД— BEAUTIFUL STRANGER, SITTING RIGHT THERE.

꩜ [ bungou stray dogs ] fyodor dostoyevsky x reader

wc: 300+

-> first person pov; fluff; sprinkle of angst (only if you squint); admiring from afar; open ending; subway crushie!fyodor; very slightly ooc

now playing... beautiful stranger by laufey.

it wasn't the first time i'd seen him on the train.

there he was again, seated by the doors and across from me, just like he always did.

the sharp, familiar scent of black tea wafted from the paper cup resting snugly against his tall, slim stature. sleek hair the colour of a starless night draped over his ears and barely touched his shoulders as he bent over a well-loved, slightly battered copy of Crime and Punishment.

i noted how he wore his favourite outfit. well, i assumed it was his favourite, because it was the attire i almost always saw him wearing. it consisted of a neatly ironed, stark white polo tucked beneath a woven violet-purple vest and smart dark slacks. he must have felt my gaze on him, because his Oxfords stopped tapping rhythmically against the train floor.

my beautiful stranger lifted his gaze from the pages of my favourite book and set his eyes -- eyes so obsidian, you'd mistake them for shadowed amethysts -- upon me. my knees felt weak and my cheeks burned, but he was kind; enigmatic eyes twinkling with something i couldn't quite put my finger on. his lips lifted ever so slightly in a gentle smile that held a bewitching charm of its own.

the train came to an unhurried halt and i recognised it as his stop. a pleasant, yet nasal, automated female voice rang out throughout the train.

"the next station is yokohama. the doors on the right side will open."

the doors slid open behind him. he threw his leather brown satchel over his shoulder, novel and tea in hand. i watched his figure manoeuvre his way through the station before ultimately vanishing into the crowd. i felt my heart break a little.

the soft doo-wop in my headphones offered some solace as i found myself relating to the lyrics, already missing my muse in the morning commute. he'd only have to remain a stranger until i saw him again.

꩜ a/n: fun fact, i wrote this for my english homework. i love love love descriptive paragraphs. also, in a way, you can also read this as a first-year geto x reader if you're a fan of purple eyed!suguru (personally, i prefer his brown eyes, but to each is their own!), though i initially wrote this with my darling dearest fedya in mind <3

꩜ taglist: @snowthatareblack, @circeee, @risakawamori (yall didnt ask for this but im tagging u anyw bc i love u)

(lmk if you want to be added!

———

© dostoevskya 2024. all rights reserved.

please do not copy, edit, or repost any of my works. plagiarism is strictly prohibited.

[swordheld]

hi!! i followed you recently and i think i'm a little bit in love with your unfailingly kind and wondrous energy, reading what you have to say always makes me love the world a little bit more. i was wondering if you had any poetry recs about the sun??

you are so sweet, oh my stars! welcome, and i do so hope you continue your cultivation of loving the world around you! there’s so much here to love, so much that waits to really bloom until you look. this may be a gently meandering type of list  –  i have such a love love love for the sun in poetry and media, you’ve chosen one of my favourite topics! i adore how it always seems to come back to light, to warmth. i hope you enjoy my picks!  ☀️

giovanni’s room, james baldwin  –  “and here my baby came indeed, through all that sunlight, his face flushed and his hair flying, his eyes, unbelievably, like morning stars.”

memory is sleeping, sanna wani  –  “where is the wind? in love, the wounds you tend. a wound, a door, a lake, a fence. whatever is perpendicular to your becoming.  /  someday, you will be in love again. the sun, a wound on your windowsill. light falls on your dreams. it sounds like someone knocking.“

in the country of resurrection, ada limón  –  “but that was last night. this morning the sun is coming alive in the kitchen. you’ve gone to get us gas station coffee and there is so much life all over the place.”

gps, shauna barbosa  –  “you kiss the back of my legs and i want to cry. only the sun has come this close, only the sun.”

there is a gold light in certain old paintings, donald justice  –  “there is a gold light in certain old paintings  /  that represents a diffusion of sunlight  /  it is like happiness, when we are happy  /  it comes from everywhere and nowhere at once, this light  /  the world is dusty, uncle. let us work.”

the first day without a mother, joy harjo  – “i keep looking back. maybe i have turned to salt. it burns blue, like the spirits who have already started to call me home, up over the last earthy hill broken through with starts of blue flowers that heal the wounded heart.  /  i sit up in the dark drenched in longing. i am carrying over a thousand names for blue that i didn’t have at dusk.”

the crying book, heather christle  –  “and what shall we make ourselves from today? a memory, a seedling, a word? what can we hold up to the light and find despair has not yet touched?”

july notebook: the birds, robert hass  –   “sleep like the down elevator’s  /  imitation of a memory lapse.  /  then early light.  /  why were you born, voyager?  /  are you soaked in dreams, still?  /  is the light still touching everything?”

into the breach, ocean vuong  –  “you’re so quiet you’re almost tomorrow.  /  i want to leave no one behind. to keep & be kept. the way a field turns its secrets into peonies. the way light keeps its shadow by swallowing it.”

the brothers karamazov, fyodor dostoyevsky  –  “and i seem to have such strength in me now, that i think i could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘i exist.’ in thousands of agonies -  i exist. i’m tormented on the rack -  but i exist! though i sit alone in a pillar -  i exist! i see the sun, and if i don’t see the sun, i know it’s there. and there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

when the ghosts come ashore, jacqui germain  –  “you have survived so much that no one remembers. and you still spread warm rain on all your overgrown lots. and you still get dressed in the morning. you still open wide for the sun.”

extracting the stone of madness, alejandra pizarnik (tr. by yvette siegert)  –  “your bones ache on the brink of morning. you split open.”

when i am among the trees, mary oliver  –  “i am so distant from the hope of myself, in which i have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often. around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, ‘stay awhile.’ the light flows from their branches. and they call again, ‘it's simple,’ they say, ‘and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.’”

i hope you get to stand alit and warm in a stream of sunlight soon, darling. i hope you get to keep some of it with you, tucked away in your pockets, for whenever you need a bit of starlight.  💛

[darkmacademia]

favourite books I read for the first time in 2020

a gentlman in moscow; amor towles / “If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”

vicious; v. e. schwab / “Maybe to a point, but when I climbed into that water, I put myself in His hands—” “No,” snapped Victor. “You put yourself in mine.”

the night circus; erin morgenstern / “The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”

the watchmaker of filigree street; natasha pulley / “He would be none the wiser and he would be staying at Filigree Street, probably for years, still happy, and he wouldn't have stolen those years from a lonely man who was too decent to mention that they were missing.”

station eleven; emily st. john mandel / “The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?”

the alice network; kate quinn / “Hope was such a painful thing, far more painful than rage.”

the bell jar; sylvia plath / “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”

crime and punishment; fyodor dostoyevsky / "What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind - then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be."

[2019 ver.] [my goodreads]

[kantrips]

Books read: April - June 2022

Mary Queen of Scots – Antonia Fraser

Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery (comfort reread)

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Colour – Ruby Hamad

I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman (book club – I think I was the only one in the group who liked this!)

North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell (comfort reread)

One by One – Ruth Ware (I am not immune to thrillers from street libraries)

Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro (I am so biased – love everything he does)

Cold Enough For Snow – Jessica Au (BEAUTIFUL)

The Paris Apartment – Lucy Foley (what did I just say about thrillers and street libraries?)

The Ice Palace – Tarjei Vesaas

Bright Dead Things: Poems – Ada Limón (BRILLIANT)

Bunny – Mona Awad (not as bizarre as I was led to anticipate)

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (whyyy isn’t there a sequel?)

Scenes of a Graphic Nature – Caroline O’Donoghue

The Tunnel – Ernesto Sabato

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – Olga Tokarczuk (really enjoyed this but not everyone’s cup of tea)

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth – Warsan Shire (recommend to everyone)

Howards End – E.M. Forster

A Very Nice Girl – Imogen Crimp

The Sea, the Sea – Iris Murdoch (that’s the last Iris Murdoch book I’ll ever read)

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating – Elizabeth Tova Bailey (good for your health)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid (book club - surprisingly dull given the hype)

Dropbear – Evelyn Araluen (SUPERB)

There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job – Kikuko Tsumura

Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead (was her editor on hols or...?)

A Head Full of Ghosts – Paul Tremblay

Hare House – Sally Hinchcliffe (book club)

The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides (I think I bought this over ten years ago – finally read it)

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 – Cho Nam-Joo (infuriating in a good way)

Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson ( @a11sha11fade​ !!!!! This was the one I wanted to recommend – it’s absolutely gorgeous and heartbreaking and hopeful and healing)

The Last House of Needless Street – Catriona Ward (from a street library – not what I expected)

My Pen is the Wing of a Bird – Anon (recommend to EVERYONE)

Dream Work – Mary Oliver (comfort reread)

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion

Sorrow and Bliss – Meg Mason (so worth the hype for me – loved it! But not everyone’s taste!)

The Sunlit Zone – Lisa Jacobson

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead – Emily Austin

Writers & Lovers – Lily King

Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell

Three Hours – Rosamund Lupton (street library thriller)

The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett (I so enjoyed this but also wanted more from it)

Flyaway – Kathleen Jennings (It’s niche but I absolutely adored this)

Currently reading:

The Dance Tree – Kiran Millwood Hargrave (please have a happy ending pleeeease please please)

Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales – Gordon Jarvie (editor) (comfort reread – my absolute favourite book from childhood and it is falling apart. Reading these slowly before bed because some of my novels have been TOO SCARY or too sad ha)

[path-of-my-childhood]

It's a personal ask but still..What are your favourite books? Have you read anything from foreign literature like English, Asian or Russian? Did you like it? Answer if you don't mind)

I used to be a much bigger reader, nowadays I don’t so much. But that’s mostly because I still haven’t finished my studies (economics) so I still have to go through few books there, maybe after I’m done with it all and I’ve had like a one year period where I didn’t have to touch any book - maybe then I’ll get back into reading. 😂

But I’ve been an avid reader when I was younger. I actually learned to write and read very young, I was around 4-ish at the time. Around the time I started elementary (around 7 years old), I would take random novels from shelves of my grandparent’s homes, because they were the ones who mostly took care of my brother and I while we were kids and parents were working, and I would read them. I was pretty good, could read a decent sized novel in few days. Of course, had no idea what I was reading cause I was a literal child 😂 it was pretty funny when I re-read those same novels later on in life and was like, ‘Ahh, so that’s what this book is about.’ But it was good mental exercise at the time and I’m really glad grown-ups around me encouraged me to keep at it.

Throughout elementary school (in my country from age 7-15) and high school (15-19) we always had Serbian language and grammar and that subject includes obligatory reading of course. In my country the program includes a lot of domestic writers, and then as you are getting older a lot of Russian classics and classics of Western literature. So I read a lot of those… Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivo Andric, Hemingway, Dante, Shakespeare, Homer - and much more, if it’s something that is often referred to in conversation around the world - we’ve had to read it.

As far as my reading taste nowadays go - I really, really love biographies. I love reading about real people and real things. For example, some years ago I’ve read a biography of Abraham Lincoln and it absolutely fascinated me. Also, biographies of Sir Alex Ferguson, former manager of Manchester United - those were a must-read for me as a life long fan. Then there’s this writer Edward Rutherfurd that writes books about cities and their development throughout history and it’s sooo good. Series about London is probably my favorite, but New York one was great too. It’s like biographies of cities.

For some lighter reading my go-to are thrillers, so anything by Dan Brown and Steve Berry will do, but if I had to pick favorites it would probably be “The Da Vinci Code”, or “The List of Seven” by Mark Frost. I’m a huge fan of Arthur Conan Doyle and I absolutely love every S.Holmes story he’s ever written. Also, I still think “The Hobbit” is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. Then there are some books that I consider essential reading for everyone because they were so formative in my life, like “The Catcher in the Rye”, “Crime and Punishment”, “The Little Prince”, “We Children of Zoo Station”, “In Desert and Wilderness”, “The Call of the Wild”, there’s more but I’ll stop there.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, nowadays the time that I do have for reading I usually spend reading about business management, practices in HR, financial strategies etc. And the worst part is that I actually really enjoy studying and researching those subjects. I guess that is… adulting. And yes, I am thoroughly disappointed in myself as I’m writing this 😄