I'm re-reading novels that I last looked at decades ago. For no especial reason other than I've found them on my bookshelves when I've been looking for something else. So it's serendipity at play instead of deliberate choice.

And that has it's benefits; deflation is n't just reserved for economics, I've had that happen to me with books - intentionally sought out something expecting it be good, or to recapture the potentency it seemed to have the first time I read it - and nothing, the bubbles have gone flat, it's curdled.

Happenstance, accidental discovery in other words, is absolutely free from any expectations. You pick whatever it is that's caught your eye off the shelves and you read. That's it. No echoes from the past, no predictions what it might be like. No, the book stands on it's own two feet. You and it, nothing else.

At the moment, I'm steadily trotting through Crime and Punishment. It's an old copy that must have sat on my bookshelves for decades. It's obvious I've read it before, there are occasional margin scribbles and underlined sentences, but I can't remember a thing about the work itself, except for the name of the protagonist, Raskolnikov, who is accepted literary shorthand for a certain character type, and it's the latter that's the reason I remember even that fragment.

So, it's effectively a novel I'm reading for the first time, which as every reader knows, carries the same trepidation as a first date. All that "What are they going to be like? Am I coming on too quickly? Are we going to make something out of this?

It's that utter sense of nervousness that's too foggy to properly pin down, let alone explain, the words simply slide around too much to form proper sentences, but whatever it is, it drives you forward. That's where I am now, turning each page with ever growing curiousity and more than a pinch of excitement.

Will it be a made in heaven thing? Let's see.