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.

Already shelved.

Three of these were inspired by this piece, heard while driving to Michigan last week.

These have already been shelved because I will continue rereading Ulysses into August, and I’m also working on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and some Wendell Berry (poetry, essays, and Remembering) for Roundtable courses.