Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

27 Oct 2003, 15:30 p.m.

Pretty tired. When I was in eleventh grade, I asked my…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Pretty tired.

When I was in eleventh grade, I asked my wonderful English teacher, Sam Hatch, to name his favorite novel. He considered and answered: Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. A few years ago I tried to read it and gave up in boredom and confusion forty or seventy pages in.

I've just begun it again, and can't imagine why I stopped last time. Leo and Nastasya intrigue me as two eccentrics who are playing by their own rules and forcing everyone else to adapt. You have to know the game to break its rules to your own advantage. Four years ago, I didn't know the game.