Notes from Underground

Why it’s on the list: Dostoevsky’s spiteful, self-lacerating narrator railing against rational self-interest and utopian schemes — the short novel often read as the opening of existentialism.

Where I heard about it

• @athenaeumbc — one of ~35 old books in a stack photographed by Athenaeum Book Club (October 2026) under the line “One of the hidden benefits of reading old books is that they rescue you from the arrogance of the present.” The full stack is listed on One of the hidden benefits… (tweet).

Connections

• Fyodor Dostoevsky — author.
• Crime & Punishment — the Dostoevsky novel already read; this one came two years before it.
• One of the hidden benefits… (tweet) — the stack it came from.