I suck at remembering names. Probably took the fifth or sixth reading of LOTR before I could get Saruman and Sauron straight.
Russian literature was a major problem for me. Everyone has four names and all the names are similar. Combine that with the overall dreariness and tedium of the stories and it just wasn't what I wanted to read.
One short story always stuck with me and seemed to typify Russian Literature of that period. I think it was by Chekhov.
A pretentious woman of humble means borrows a pearl necklace from a well to do acquaintance. She loses the necklace and only has the case. Being too proud to admit to her friend that she lost the necklace she takes the case to a jeweler to replace the necklace. The price to replace it is enormous and the woman and her husband go into extreme debt to buy the replacement necklace.
They live in poverty for @ twenty years until the necklace is paid off. Meeting her friend she explains that they have been living a meager existence to replace the necklace she lost but felt too guilty to admit was lost. Whereupon her friend tells her that the necklace was just costume jewelry and not real pearls at all.
What an uplifting story.
Give the author his due as it is the only work of Russian Literature that I remember.