Two gifts and three purchases; shelved.

This morning I finished Paradise Lost, but it remains on the stack beside my favorite chair because I am rereading it, this time for a Roundtable course. Other books I’m (re)reading for Roundtable courses this month include Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri; 1999), The Color of Water (James MacBride; 1995), Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer; 1380), and Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare; 1602). For my reread of Dante’s Inferno, which will continue through November, I am using both Mary Jo Bang’s translation and John Aitkin Carlyle’s. With my daughters I’m reading The Magician’s Nephew (C.S. Lewis; 1955) and Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang; 2002). In advance of the first episode of A Great Book with Barack Obama, I’m reading The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin; 1963). My husband and I continue our slow read of Oliver Ready’s translation of Crime and Punishment. And before bed most nights, I read a few pages of Murder Book: A Graphic Memoir of a True Crime Obsession (Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell; 2021), which absolutely delights this unabashed true crime (and graphic works) fan.