Reading Routine

I have become a regular at several coffee shops in the Kemang area because I found that when I was going straight to my apartment after work and tutoring that I wasn't as productive as I should have been, especially regarding tackling my reading list. Consequently, as I'm walking home, I've made a habit at stopping at a coffee shop to read for an hour or so. I prefer to go to places like Tornado Coffee or Coffee War over Starbucks because Starbucks doesn't brew different varieties of Indonesian coffees, and thanks to Coffee War I'm starting to tell the difference between Papuan, Sumatran, and Torajan coffees! Additionally, patronizing a local coffee shop over a multi-national makes the experience more genuine and allows me to stick up for 'the little guy.' :)

Thanks to this routine, I recently finished 'The Brothers Karamazov.' It is amazing how a book that is over 700 pages can hold your attention throughout and how seemingly unrelated side events stuck in randomly throughout the novel are woven together at the end to create amazing depth. It would have been extremely interesting to read the book as it was initially published - chapter by chapter in a periodical. In that way, I think the novel more parallels a TV series in its function and execution. Furthermore, I was struck by how overtly Russian the novel was (obviously), but more specifically how ideas and themes from the book were common to what I learned in Russian class and observed when there for a few weeks. Next up is 'The Tempest'