Et cetera

For the history test, I ended up writing about Ivan the Terrible and Catherine II the Great.  I guess there's just been released a new biography about Catherine the Great.  Funny thing is, I love historical fiction, documentaries, and certain textbooks, but I have a hard time getting into these modern, quasi-novel biographies.  Anyhow, I might try reading it.  She became a good political leader, but her personal life was a bit tumultuous.  She and her husband, Tsar Peter III, had an unhappy marriage, and she also had many lovers, most (or all) of them distinguished officers/counts.  Additionally, she ascended the throne via a palace coup which overthrew Peter III.  Pretty disturbing.

I'm still reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, by the way.  There are lots of long conversations.  In fact, I just finished reading a scene that had two long, major subplots/conversations within it.  It's an interesting technique--in this way, the plot moves forward in segments, with most of the progress happening in the long, long dialogue.  I wonder if that style would be widely accepted by literary agents today?  I rather like it, though you'd have to be an expert at dialogue to make it work.