I've often heard Crime and Punishment described as one of the most gripping novels ever to be written, and let me just say, that's absolutely right.
The book had such a hold on me that I literally couldn't put it down. I read it in class, in the bathroom, on the subway. I didn't dare put it in my backpack for fear of breaking this strange frenzied spell. On saturday I sat on the couch and breezed through three hundred pages straight in one afternoon.
I was drawn into Rodion Raskolnikov's tormented whirlpool of half-baked, feverish thoughts and ideas right from chapter one. I felt every emotion described, aching and burning and just jumping right off the page! I followed along, eyes wide with a mild terror at seeing echoes of my own darkest, strangest thoughts strung through a work written a century and a half ago.
Here's the catch though. It was depressing and terrifying. The book was so masterfully written that every emotion, every pain described became mine, in a way. I loved it and hated it. I don't think I enjoyed it very much at all, in fact... but I literally. Couldn't. Stop. Reading.
I highly recommend it, though, because everyone needs to experience just how deep words can bite, how they can entangle you and lock you away by sheer force of detail and will. Crime and Punishment, people.