Dostoyevsky quickly fell from grace within the St Petersburg literary milieu after The Double was published. The resentment was probably sparked by jealousy but then Belinsky, Turgenev and their group moved to a rival magazine. From Dostoyevsky in Love:

'Fyodor's only defender was the new chief critic of Notes of the Fatherland (the periodical ( Read more... )

I've had an itchy rash the past few days, a reaction I think to the magnesium. I've never had a rash before so it seems likely. I was going to lower the dose but I powered through, like a hero! I'm almost grateful for a reaction, most supplements don't do anything.

Im reading Wild Houses, a first novel by an Irish writer, Colin Barrett, whose ( Read more... )

Now, in the cold loght of day, I can see that, despite last night's rather gushing post, OCD has nothing to do with my Saturday night cans. I think I'm having them because I have nothing to do otherwise, and this is why I'm so annoyed the next day. I'm not bothered drinking the rest of the week, maybe on a Friday, so I'm just in the habit, a habit ( Read more... )

I realised tonight that my once a week, like clockwork, drinking has been down to my OCD. I've had this behaviour before, I wasn't so bad that I was turning the light switch off five times or anything, but I noticed that before I'd leave the house I'd check if, say, the immersion was off, then the cooker was all off, etc. I read somewhere that OCD ( Read more... )

It was funny getting into the cold plunge today, the water felt warm on my legs when k was standing in it, I thought the chiller must be broken, sadly it wasn't like this when I lowered the rest of myself in.

Reading what I wrote below, inebriated at two in the morning, there isn't, I don't think, a rhythm, some brain cycle, about when we urinate, ( Read more... )

In a way, trying to understand why I drink once a week might be the key to understanding my health problems. There's a rhythm where we urinate, I might have messed that up through drininking vast amounts of beer.

https://open.spotify.com/track/196bjfNXvEDkODWVjq2RRN?si=rpFtCbD2RPOObasylqOtww

I like the start of this - 'no more war' - not the rest ( Read more... )

I made soup this week, a traditional vegetable soup with barley, and instead of just using a liquid stock or a cube from the supermarket I made chicken stock, dragging the pressure cooker out from under the kitchen table where it's been since I stopped making stock for drinking a few weeks ago. Using proper stock made such an improvement to the ( Read more... )

I'm taking a new approach to my health problems, while keeping my current pill regime going of course (until I run out anyway). I'm thinking now it might be a gut problem. Drinking so much beer might have wrecked my gut. I had a bit of a smell in my, I don't know, last decade of drinking. I didn't drink vodka or whiskey (I was quite food of a good ( Read more... )

I really think the damage blue screen addiction does to young people is under appreciated. When I was a teenager if I was bored I'd go to a friend's house, now teenagers get a quick hit from the blue screens on their mobiles, which alleviates the boredom to an extent. Consequently they don't end up developing social skills to the extent they should ( Read more... )

My next, after two or three novels, read, Dosoyevsky in Love: An Intimate Life. It got a good review on the library website. I'm reading a lot about Dostoyevsky before I get around to his biography, for some reason.

After 8 months in prison, a group of young men sentenced to death for sharing “treasonous” literature is marched into a wintry square ( Read more... )