I also stumbled onto Crime and Punishment at 18 and expected it to be difficult and was blown away with how Dostoyevsky wrote one of the greatest novels of all time, to be sure, but as the author here says, also how engaging he made it.
The scene where he commits the crime is an absolute stunner, edge-of-your-seat, thriller. Who does that? Who can pull that off? Dostoyevsky
Dunno. I can't read Russian for shit (pre-kindergarten level, I'd guess), but it seems like cheating to read it in English.
Dostoyevsky was originally published in magazines chapter by chapter, so he would end the December’s on a cliffhanger so that the readers re-subscribed