Peter Biro

This is one of the most boring and pointless books I have ever had the misfortune to read. THERE IS NO ACTION AT ALL in the 500+ pages of this book. Instead all it is is gossip and endless descriptions of the most uninteresting and insipid personalities only a second-rate author would have the patience (or lack of wisdom) to describe. None of the characters grab you. None of them are interesting. "The Portrait of a Lady" is a very bad word painting. Don't waste your time with it. Unless you approve of literary torture. THIS BOOK IS MEDIOCRE 19th CENTURY.

Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" would've read better had it been a short story rather than a full-blown novel. There is page after page, and chapter after chapter, of irrelevant text which leads nowhere, and very little "crime" or "punishment."