Crime and Punishment is probably one of my (many) favourite books, though I read it about ten years ago now. Damn, that's a long time. Holy crap I am getting old.
I never managed to get through Brothers. As for other Russian authors, I remember liking The Master and Margarita, though I'm not sure that was depressing enough for what you're after.
Anyway, I've read a few books lately. Currently I'm reading War by Sebastian Junger - it's basically written from the same notes and experiences he and another guy used to make the documentary Restrepo, which I was meaning to watch for a long time but found it was removed from Netflix.
The book is pretty good, but after reading most of a book called Poppy by Gregor Salmon, I think I kind of prefer a linear, chronological type of non-fiction writing. I mean, Salmon was a bit unusual in that, rather than going with a dry account of big-picture kind of things, it's basically just a straight-up, rather personal account of Gregor's trip to Afghanistan in order to research the book, with the occasional informative digression.
War (the book) was researched over a few visits throughout a year or so, and the scenes tend to jump around all over the place depending on what point the author's making or what phenomenon he wishes to explain, and it doesn't give specific dates so it is hard as heck to keep track of. Plus, once someone's been mentioned even briefly he apparently expects the reader to remember their name and who they hell they were - unless it's someone who has already been adequately described, in which case he sometimes gives you a wholly unnecessary refresher course on who they are, haha.
It's still an interesting read, though. I just think I might have preferred the documentary, which seemed pretty great from what little I watched of it.
Oh, and I read Looking For Alaska, which looking back doesn't seem like it was all that mind-blowing but it made me feel lots of feels at the time, so that's the main thing. Put it this way, I gave it a knee-jerk five-star rating on Goodreads right after finishing it, which says that I enjoyed it greatly.
I'm here to do that, enjoy books, not dissect them critically.
Before that, I read... uhhh... I can't remember. Oh, well quite a while ago there was Vernon God Little which immediately became a favourite. Cannot recommend it highly enough. Then more recently there was a book called White Noise by Don DeLillo which was pretty weird and claustrophobic but overall very good, even if I would have liked to see more of the characters.
Also, the other day I happened upon a stall selling one dollar books for charity or some shit, and they turned out to have a great selection of lesser-known classics. I picked up a hardcover copy of The Mosquito Coast, a book I borrowed from a library and loved but never owned, amongst others.