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gvarshang t1_itq78y1 wrote

If you have trouble with Harry Potter, don’t read Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky! But, yeah, I did occasionally say to myself “Now who is Sirius Black again?” and “Who’s that teacher that teaches potions?” but it’s really not necessary to be on top of it all. I just kind of go along and let the story wash over me. It’s sort of like the approach I take when watching a show on television with characters with thick accents that I’m not familiar with. Even if I miss half of what they’re saying,I still get a sense of what’s going on in the story or will when the next thing happens and I kind of just go along for the ride. Unless you are going to be tested on what you read, I recommend my approach.

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NefariousnessOne1859 t1_itr393b wrote

Definitely no LOTR or game of thrones either. I remember the first time I tried to read LOTR getting all the boromir and thorimir’s mixed up

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Jungle_Official t1_itwgcht wrote

The Russian writers are especially confusing because many of the main characters have more than one name and they're used interchangeably throughout the story. In Crime and Punishment, you have Rodin Romanovich Raskolnikov, also known as Rodya and Rodka and there's his sister Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikov, also known Dunya and Dunechka. You don't need a cheat sheet so much as a flow chart.

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