I say a lot in my review of Crime and Punishment. I felt a lot when I read it. Frustration, annoyance, disappointment, and just so many negative things came up.

Everything can be meaningful in its context and those Russian men with pens wrote lasting contributions to art. In the context of designing a life that is meaningful though, we cannot take in everything ever created. We’ve only so much time.

So, we must curate.

“Bitterness is the easiest way

to leave this world having had only

a near-life experience.”

-Andrea Gibson

I don’t want to make myself any more bitter than world events right now are working to do. I’m going to leave the Russians behind for the moment and maybe just entirely. Truly great ideas don’t only exist in their original book anyway. They bob on the waves and travel round the world and through time. They are passed down and expanded upon through generations of writers and readers.

I’ll leave my review of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment up, because I wrote it and it was a real moment. Moving forward, though, I’ll be choosing to worry less about a “well-rounded” reading journey. I think I’ll curate my own by following the ideas that float me to writers who make an art of expressing them.

Speaking of, check out Andrea Gibson’s delicious book:

You Better Be Lightning book by Andrea Gibson

-HR