notes from the underground is short, the first half is kind of weird because it isn't completely understandable without understanding the intellectual context the book was written in but like, you can probably still read it. The second part is basically just a narrative.

I liked demons a lot but its been a long time since I read it. Crime and Punishment was cool, very good example of a psychological novel which is basically what dostoyevsky is famous for. I read half of The Idiot and didn't like it so I gave up on it the other day. I've also read The Gambler which was cool but not as memorable, I've never read BK but i'd like to at some point.

I've read different translators for different books, the only one i know is that Crime and Punishment and The Idiot were pevear and volokhonsky. people on 4chan and shit love to say oh P&V sucks but i imagine that almost no one has read dostoyevsky in the original and in multiple translations, so i would just get one and as long as the writing isn't like annoying to you its probably fine. Only note i would make is that Constance Garnett was the standard for a long time but some of her translations have small parts of the book changed or missing.

This is only seen through the view of translations but difficulty with dostoyevsky isn't really in his language in itself, like ive never noticed a ton of long complicated sentences, but some stuff is unclear without a vague knowledge of social and cultural context, but a lot of translations will have notes explaining these. The other problem is that his characters are in many cases fucking weird as shit and it sometimes takes some thinking to follow their motivations and stuff. I have always liked thinking about books but even if you don't have a ton of practice I don't think that would prevent you from getting any enjoyment/fulfillment from his books, there's plenty there to go deeper into but a lot of it is pretty straightfoward.

Dostoyevsky was a conservative christian but i don't think it ruins his books for me or anything. Demons especially deals a lot with anarchists, i have no idea how reasonable his portrayal of anarchists in 1860s russia or whenever is but it's pretty interesting.

Also if you are just generally interested in russian literature, Dead Souls by Gogol is literally one of the funniest fucking books ive ever read. Completely different mood than dostoyevsky but absolutely recommend. He's more famous for his short stories which I haven't read but I'm sure those are good too.

o one more thing about difficulty, maybe the most difficult thing is keeping track of the different characters names because they might be referred to by their personal name + patronymic, their last name, or a shortening of their personal name. Might be some others too. But basically you need a list of the characters with their full names, but most editions ive seen have that.