re: Brothers Karamazov

That's sort of the point, though. The horror of the situation in The Trial lies in its everyday-ness. There is a sense in which Kafka and Lovecraft are similar: in both worlds, what we would think of as "normal life" is really just a thin veneer which protects us from the underlying madness and menace of reality. The difference is that in Lovecraft's mythos, the madness and menace are provided by horrible godlike beings from outside time and space, and in Kafka's, they are provided by a vast and unknowable bureaucracy. In both cases, the true and final terror is that these ultimate antagonists are incapable of either knowing or caring about those caught in their grip, reducing the lives of these individuals, as you so correctly pointed out, to meaninglessness.

That’s why I don’t read them. Too complicated.

The Brothers K singlehandedly killed a book club I was in a few years back. We voted for the book of the month 2 months in advanced. You had to choose one book from 5 options.

I don't know my friends were thinking. I was the only member to finish the book.