Rasknolnikov Revisited

Above: the newest version of Crime and Punishment which is translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Summer tutoring perk: less required reading = more Suzybuzz assignments (i.e. I can assign my favorite angsty novel to strengthen students' reading comprehension and critical writing skills).  After reading four of the six parts of this Dostoevsky classic, my student said incredulously, "Wait, only one part is 'crime' and the other five parts are 'punishment?'" C &P is a long novel and many of the paragraphs fill entire pages. Yet Dostoevsky's intricate exploration of the Superhuman complex is well worth slogging through the characters' patronymic and surnames.  Making a list of the characters to refer to as you read can be very helpful. Also, with a book this long, annotations (making notes in the margins, underlining passages). If a work is assigned in school, buying the same edition that is used in class discussions is worth the extra few dollars, particularly with works that are in translation.  You'll want your page numbers to correlate with the professor's, and you'll want to refer to your annotations when making points in class - particularly in smaller, more discussion based forums.
       To my student’s chagrin, I like to assign response papers after around 100 pages are read.  Response papers are less formal and allow students to respond on a more personal level to what they find more salient in the text.  Short quotes and examples are nevertheless vital for this type of assignment; make friends with the text!  The beauty of response papers is they tend to intimidate students less than the longer, more formal analytic writing that tends to be assigned when a book is finished.  If all the response papers are compiled and reread, students are likely to feel more encouraged and less paralyzed when it is time to write the longer paper as they already have a bunch of ideas in front of them.