Project D

I tend to be suspicious of all new inventions and technological progress. I can't help it. Whenever I am offered or introduced a new gadget or appliance, I am opposed to it, by default. At the same time, I am eternally enthusiastic about all novel means of communicating and making a connection between people (hence the blog). This is why I am particularly thrilled every time I arrive at something meaningful and with a genuinely personal feel while I am surfing this world wide web of ours.

This week, I was glancing through what was new at Publishing Perspectives, a cool blog itself, when I incidentally spotted a banner for a reading blog: Project D.

Project D is a blog edited by writer, journalist and blogger Dennis Abrams. It is devoted to the reading of four Dostoevsky novels, starting with Crime and Punishment. So convenient! I am already halfway through my Finnish translation, but reading Abrams' carefully gathered and thematized (albeit at times even too detailed) background info is the perfect companion to the reading itself. An added bonus will be the other readers' comments once they start to appear (the first chapters of Part I were only assigned for this weekend).

What better cure for my inherent suspicions than imagining a global readership with their respective copies and translations of for instance Crime and Punishment, reading in their homes and rush hour buses and park benches, and then logging on to something like this blog to share their thoughts.

P. S. If your new year's promise was related to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost instead of Dostoevsky, as my 2012 promise might be, you might enjoy checking out Abrams' previous reading group, The Cork-Lined Room.