Ten top life lessons from Russian literature

Viv Groskop is the author of The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons From Russian Literature. One of her top ten life lessons from Russian literature, as shared at the Guardian:

You’re not as smart as you would like to think you are

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Poor Raskolnikov. Wanting to prove himself invincible, he hits on the perfect scheme to snaffle some cash by murdering an old lady. He bungles the job, kills an extra person by mistake and manages to leave most of the money behind. Rodion Romanovich, you are very silly indeed. But all is not lost. He can get some degree of comfort by becoming heavily religious. The lesson? Sometimes we do things so stupid that even God struggles to forgive us.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Crime and Punishment is among Annemarie Neary's top ten books about guilt, Becky Ferreira's seven best comeuppances in literature, Lorraine Kelly's six best books, the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer, Gerald Scarfe's six best books, and Andrew Klavan's five best psychological crime novels. Elmore Leonard has never read beyond page fifty of the tome.

--Marshal Zeringue