A brief roundup of my reading in July.
1. Rebellion
— Joseph Roth
One of my new favorite authors. This one is short but packs a punch and is my book of the month.
2. Voyage in the Dark
— Jean Rhys
The usual themes, but I never tire of Rhys’s writing.
3. The Medieval Scriptorium
— Sara J. Charles
Having read quite a bit on this topic, I didn’t really learn anything new from this one, but I enjoyed the narrative and straight-forward prose, making it easily accessible to even those coming at the topic afresh.
4. The Apocryphal Gospels
— Paul Foster
It’s been a while since I’ve read anything on this topic, so this was a good refresher. If you want to read good translations of the so-called Apocryphal Gospels, then I recommend the Penguin classics edition. If you don’t know your NT very well, and know nothing about the early Church (up to the Council of Nicaea), then you might find some of this hard to follow.
I appreciate that the author doesn’t waste time on sensationalist Da Vinci Code-esque conspiracy theories surrounding these non-canonical ‘gospels’. There is no evidence whatsoever that any of them predate the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and that oddball, John. My only criticism is that the prose is at times, for an introductory text, a little too academic.
5. Collected Short Stories
— Graham Greene
It’s been decades since I read Graham Greene. I think I’ve read all of his 20+ novels. Two of them are among my all-time favorites: The Power and the Glory and Travels With My Aunt. Was nice to reacquaint myself with Greene after so long. I mostly enjoyed this collection of short stores. The edition I read is no longer in print. But the new Penguin edition, Complete Short Stories, has them all. Or you can borrow the older edition from the Internet Archive.
6. Parmenides of Elea
— Intro & trans by David Gallop
Only about 120 fragments of Parmenides’ writings have survived. I had only known him through Diogenes and Aristotle — the former writing about his life, the latter quoting him. Includes the original Greek text opposite Gallop’s English translation and extensive notes and bibliography.
7. The Female Man
— Joanna Russ
Not sure what to make of this one. The four incarnations of one woman (Joanna, Jeannine, Janet, and Jael) across four parallel world’s is a great setup, but the narrative not only jumps back and forwards in time, but then across the different world’s — and a lot of the time I was quite lost. Despite this, it’s obvious Russ was a huge talent, so I might try her On Strike Against God or We Who Are About To… next.
