The Side Quest Book Club Podcast

In this mini-episode, Jonathan recounts how he came to hate Crime and Punishment. Not to worry, he eventually came around.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the bleak heat of 19th-century St. Petersburg, Rodion Raskolnikov, a brilliant but destitute former student, wanders the streets nursing a dangerous theory. He believes that "extraordinary" men are above the moral law of the masses and have the right—even the duty—to commit crimes for the greater good.

To prove his superiority, Raskolnikov executes a cold-blooded plan to murder an unscrupulous old pawnbroker. The "perfect crime" quickly spirals into a psychological nightmare. Haunted by guilt, paranoia, and the mind games of investigator Porfiry Petrovich, Raskolnikov begins to crumble.

His only hope for redemption lies in Sonya Marmeladov, a young woman forced into hardship who maintains a self-sacrificing faith. As the walls close in, Raskolnikov must choose between a life of mental imprisonment or the path toward spiritual rebirth and confession.


ABOUT THE SIDE QUEST BOOK CLUB PODCAST 
Reading is the ultimate side quest. Side Quest is a casual book club podcast full of literary adventures. Join Slava and Jonathan as they discuss the books they are reading, life, history, belief systems, and more. Explore world-building, characters, and story development, and share some laughs along the way.

New episodes drop every TUES.

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CREDITS 
Hosts: Slava and Jonathan
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Intro/Outro Music: HoliznaCC0v
Editing by: CharacterNorth6081
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Creators and Guests

Host
Jonathan
Host
Slava
Digital Strategist. Co-Host. Aspiring writer of stories.

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

Some books are treated like they're above criticism. Crime and Punishment is one of them. And that is part of the problem.

Crime and Punishment is the worst book ever. Now, you might be asking, who's this guy? Why does he get to say that about Dostoevsky? Wait with me here for a second. Our personalities play a part in how we connect with books and characters.

Let's get into it. About a month ago, I was chatting with one of my best friends, Chris. He mentioned, hey, have you ever read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky? Now, maybe you're well-read in literature and have read all the classics.

So you know that this book is translated from Russian, and it's noted as one of the greatest books of the 19th century. I took Chris's suggestion and the suggestion of the masses to read Crime and Punishment by picking up a copy. Now, before I continue with this story, a quick side quest.

When I was growing up, I struggled with reading and comprehension. So I've not read as many of the classics as some of my contemporaries or peers have. And it was a real struggle in elementary school through high school.

By the time I was midway through high school, I developed enough skills to get by with a slow reading ability that I just made it work. And then I got to college and realized the rest of the whole dang world reads all the time. So I was again behind in my reading capabilities.

And it was at this point I began working on strengthening my reading muscle. It helped that two of my roommates in college were both attending a prestigious college in New York City at the time called the King's College, where they were required to pick a path that doesn't have a single major or a double major, but it has a triple major focus. At least that's what it was back in 2007.

Things change. It's 2026. One of my roommates, Johnny, focused on politics, economics, and philosophy.

He had been at the King's College for a few years and had quite the collection of books. As roommates do, I picked up some of his books from time to time and parsed through the pages. The text was dense.

Each book was just as dense as the last. And I felt like the stupidest person on earth because I couldn't understand it. My inner narrative was something like this.

I'm only in film school. They're getting a real education. I must be the idiot in New York City.

I hope my friends don't realize how uncultured, uneducated, and moronic I am. Maybe it's just me, but when my inner narrative gets rolling, it can be pretty ruthless. This is why we need to confront our inner monologues, but I'll save that for a different time.

This idea, I'm only in film school, they're getting a real education, and I'm an idiot, I hope my friends don't realize it, was shame that I carried when I looked around at those friends I had, the intellectual books that they carried around, the ones that they were reading and talking about, dialoguing about these ideas. Aristotle, Plato, Dostoevsky, all of them. So I picked one up and slowly read it, really slowly.

For reference, an average child could read three Dr. Seuss books faster than I read back then. Maybe it was the fact that it was philosophy. Maybe it was I was just a really slow reader.

Either way, I began working the muscle of reading faster and comprehending quicker. Now let's move back to Crime and Punishment being the worst book ever. Fast forward to August 2021 and my friend prompting me to read this literary classic, Crime and Punishment.

I am now an above average reader, I still haven't figured out speed reading, and it's 2026, I still haven't figured out speed reading, but I'm much quicker than I was 14 years ago. That was 2021 plus five years, 19 years ago. In my years of reading, I can list on a single hand how many Russian translated authors I've read.

Two. It's two. But now it's three or four because I'm going through this blog that I wrote here.

I only speak English, so maybe it's easier to comprehend in Russian, but I struggled with Crime and Punishment. Full on struggled. As in, I was going to give up because it's too hard to finish this book.

Struggled. I almost DNR'd this book. Did not finish.

I struggled. It was decent for the first half. I was in it.

I had an okay grasp of what was going on. I could feel the main character's struggles. I sort of put together the semblance of the town they lived in.

Somewhere about the 55 to 60 percent mark in the story, I detached both from the story and the characters. I wanted to quit. I don't like quitting things simply due to my own lack of entertainment or interest, but I was completely over Crime and Punishment.

I was done. I was not interested, not connected to the characters. I wanted to put it down.

However, I do not like quitting when I've committed to a goal. It's one of the ways that I help myself grow. I finish things that I start regardless of my waning interest.

I'm not sure what changed during my read-through. I felt this tension of the main character and his wrestling with madness and guilt and shame of killing two women with an axe. Then suddenly, I was simply disengaged.

I've been reflecting on this for weeks, and I'm sure at some level it's a me problem. I only say that because Crime and Punishment is a literary classic, and I don't think my opinion is greater than those who've determined that this is a marvel work for its time. So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us asking the question and reflecting on ourselves.

How do our personalities play a part in how we connect with books and characters? After further reflection, I think I know why I became detached. I think our personalities are strongly weighted for what we give our attention or lack of attention to. Take another side quest with me.

From the 1950s until now, psychologists have honed in on the makeup of our personalities. It's called the Big Five Personality Test. If you know anything about the Big Five, you know that the research has determined personalities are made up of five main attributes and ten sub-attributes.

Each of us has a different recipe that makes up our personalities. The Big Five categories are agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience. However, sometimes they change the titles of these categories.

So depending on when you're watching this, it may have changed slightly. In order to keep this side quest short, I want to take a look at neuroticism. Neuroticism in the Big Five Personality Test is defined as a measure of general sensitivity to negative emotions such as pain, sadness, irritability, defensiveness, anger, or anxiety.

The two sub-traits of neuroticism are made up of withdrawal and volatility. For me, when I took this test, my withdrawal is exceptionally low, which means individuals exceptionally low in withdrawal virtually never suffer from or are impeded by anticipatory anxiety. Now, that wasn't always the case.

I used to have high anxiety, but that got solved in my life, which is a story for a different time. Happy to share it with you if you drop something in the comments if you want me to. The second one is volatility, and individuals who are exceptionally low in volatility are extraordinarily stable and predictable in their moods.

They're virtually never irritable and rarely experience disappointment, frustration, pain, or loneliness. Now, you might be thinking, well, isn't that nice, right? I haven't always been that way. Again, there's a story for that a different time.

If you want me to tell it, leave a note in the comments. Happy to walk you through what I went through to resolve those things in my life. In both withdrawal and volatility, I'm in the first percentile.

This puts me in the zeroth percentile for neuroticism, zero. I'm lower in neuroticism than 99 out of 100 other people. There's a photo below.

I can link to it for my test results. And I'm not saying that that makes me better than other people. I'm saying that this affects how I read crime and punishment overall.

It says that overall, people at this percentile, the zeroth percentile, are extremely tolerant of stress and tend to breeze through even the most severe failures and setbacks in life. I bring this up because I think it factors into my struggle to connect with Raskolnikov, the main character of Crime and Punishment. If you know the story of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov has a seed of madness nearing the beginning of the book that he feeds because he murdered two women in town.

And throughout the book, he continually wrestles with delirium and madness. On top of other stresses he has through the story, being in poverty, his family coming, this madness overtaking him, a delirium that he goes through. And I simply couldn't relate.

I did finish the book. I can't relate. I tried.

However, I believe that the reason I couldn't relate is because of how I handle stress and negative emotions. I don't carry negative emotions with me. I quickly sort through them, process them, move on, or let them go.

I don't let them linger. Frankly, I have thought maybe I was broken because ever since A Spiritual Awakening in 2014, I haven't really had long-lasting stress. Short-term items? Absolutely.

Yes. Definitely really bad breakups. My younger brother having open heart surgery and three months after his son.

My nephew of nine months being diagnosed with brain cancer. I've had reasons to be stressed and worn down, and yet I've sorted through it and kept fighting amidst the storms. And I speculate that I got bored with this world-renowned piece of literature due to how I handle stress.

Dostoevsky did a really good job at building tension in this book. However, I don't engage with stress the same way others do from what I've learned in having conversations with family and friends. When I counter high-stress places in life, my mind shifts gears.

And I go back to reference the low-level neuroticism where I disengage from the stress. I disconnect it from myself. And instead, I view it as a puzzle and I don't wear the burden of it.

There are no moments of relief from the tension and stress that Raskolnikov faces throughout the book. And I just can't engage with that. In other books with strong tension, like Sanderson's Stormlight Archives, the plot has moments of reprieve.

This keeps me engaged. Dostoevsky offers no reprieve throughout the story. None.

It only builds and builds and builds. And that is the one reason why it's seen as one of the classic pieces of literature. But alas, for me, Crime and Punishment is the worst book ever.

I really tried. I did. I tried.

But I've come to believe that because of our personalities, there can be a gap between where we're at and where the characters are at. And that's why I think my personality has that gap in being able to sort through the struggles Raskolnikov encounters. I feel like I seem incapable of being able to journey with Raskolnikov.

I still respect the work of Dostoevsky. I'm still glad I took a small bite out of a long list of classics I want to go through. But it just isn't a great book for me, or someone who's uncharacteristically low in neuroticism.

But what about you? What did you think about Crime and Punishment? Let me know. What did you think? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Do you also think that this is the worst book ever? Do we have a similar personality? I don't know. You tell me.

If you want to hear how we pulled it apart, be sure to tune into the four episodes we have on Crime and Punishment coming up soon.