Dostoievsky's Journals

I am fifty pages away from the end of Dostoievsky's journals, written in French. He certainly mastered the French language, but I was nonetheless disappointed. I was expecting this to be the journal of a great writer ruminating about his own writing or writings. None of this: while in exile, he tried to earn money by publishing his thoughts on various events, some well known to history, some important only to the Russian expatriate community. All that in fiteen hundred pages, quite a read.