It is snowing and cold, perfect weather for reading. This weekend’s lineup includes assignments in Beowulf, Dante’s Inferno, and Gogol’s Dead Souls. I hope to finish Updike’s Couples for a Library of America seminar with Adam Gopnik and to get a jump on the capacious reading list for Arnold Weinstein’s course at Roundtable, “Fictions of the Self in American Literature.” In the interstices of these studies and music practice, I’m making my way through Carol Tyler’s gorgeous meditation on the nature of grief, The Ephemerata. (Review here.)