“Youth is wasted on the young.” - George Bernard Shaw (maybe)
I am going to settle into my sofa and continue reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is probably the last of three books by the author that I will read, because there are so many books and so little time. I already read Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov.
But back to the introductory quote: Many of the classics I am reading were probably read by others in high school or early college, instead of as a geezer in my case. But I think I would not have fully understood the philosophical implications of many classics if I had read them in my youth. In fact, although I read The Plague by Albert Camus in my youth and again as an old-timer, I was still fooled. I only recently learned after reading Brave Genius, Sean Carroll’s biography of Albert Camus and Jacques Monod, that The Plague is intended as an allegory for the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Even my brother who read the book many years ago and later earned a PhD in English did not know this. Now I suppose that I should read it a third time.
#Bookstodon #Dostoevsky #AlbertCamus #Books #Reading #Philosophy
Joseph
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2026-07-13 16:39:16 UTC
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2026-07-13 16:39:16 UTCEvent JSON
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