Reading woes

About a month ago I decided that it was about time that I read "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky. It was one of those books that I picked up years ago at a used book store for a dollar and a quarter but hadn't gotten around to reading yet. It was also one of those "classics" that I somehow missed out on in high school and college. So, with high expectations and the name Raskolnikov rambling around my head (thanks to one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs) I opened the book and began to read. And I'm reading still. More than 30 days later and I'm barely 150 pages in.
The book is certainly good, but I am finding ploddingly slow at most points. It's the reading equivilant of a marathon race with a 100 meter dash thrown in every 5 miles. Those 100 meter points are great, captivating, exciting. But then we slow down again to a steady jog and amble away to thoughts of depression and slow mental suffering. Frankly, I don't know how I'm going to make it to the end of the book. In the month since I've started reading, I've stopped, picked up, and finished two other books. Far easier and much more entertaining, these two books (a collection of David Sedaris stories and a Sherlock Holmes novel) and those like them are very tempting to sit down with. "Crime and Punishment" not so much.
So now what? As I see it I have three options: 1. I put the book down and never pick it up again; 2. I put the book aside for a few weeks and come back to it later; or 3. I suck it up and read the damn thing like it was a homework assignment. Knowing myself, I'll probably push through and choose option #3. But damn it if I won't complain loudly while doing so.
Thanks for letting me bitch.