This is a series where I post what I think are slightly atypical readings of the Cantos of Ezra Pound. There’s also an (updated) index of all the Cantos (and related sources) I’ve discussed so far. Today’s selection is one of the celebrated “Pisan Cantos,” Canto LXXV, plus some discussion of Pound’s relationship with music.
Right, I’m back. This is a series I started years ago. The series sat fallow for some time, but I’m taking it up again for now, for as long as I have time and energy to post and to study these poems. For those who’re new to the series, I recommend starting with the first post, and bearing in mind that I tend to post what I think are slightly atypical readings of Ezra Pound’s book of poems, The Cantos. There’s also an (updated) index of all the Cantos (and related sources) I’ve discussed so far. Today’s selection is the first …
July and August of 2026 were not bad for reading! I did travel some, so I read less than I otherwise might have—traveling with a kid makes reading a challenge—but I still got through a fair bit. I should note, I’m partway through a few books (including a translation of the Ilyǒn’s Samguk Yusa as well as the still-not-quite abandoned Morte D’Arthur) but my rule is to post about books once I’ve finished them, so those will have to wait. Below is what I finished during these two months.
May and June of 2026 were pretty good for reading! I we finished up some of those translations projects I mentioned last month, and though more have come in, with a lot more free time available I was able to finally do some serious reading! I remain stalled out on reading Sir Thomas Malory’s Complete Works (edited by Eugène Vinaver), which is funny since the RPG I was reading it for inspiration for has played out and ended. Even so, I’m trying to get back into it, one chunk at a time. In the meantime, below the cut I’ve only …
March and April of 2026 were a little rough for reading. The ol’ work schedule is basically flat-out insane, and a lot of my spare time goes into translation work, so the fact that our son’s back in school again has helped less than I thought it might. (We lost a teacher at work and, well, nobody’s hiring anyone these days, so I’m teaching a lot more hours than I’m actually supposed to be.) Whew. Anyway… I’m still off-and-on reading some of the same things I mentioned last time, like: Sir Thomas Malory’s Complete Works edited by Eugène Vinaver. Max …
January and February of 2026 were not so great for reading. While I didn’t have to teach after mid-January, I spent a lot of my energy in that month working on music for an upcoming computer game that my friend Jeremy’s working on, and February, well… besides working on a translation due in the middle of the month, my son was on school holidays for most of February, so… yeah. I didn’t get to read as much as I would have liked. Still, I did get through four books, which is not nothing, especially when one of them was like …
I’m running a bit behind on this, mostly because I’m teaching a winter course at work and those are always pretty time-intensive, but I thought I’d briefly discuss my favorite reads from last year, out of everything I read this year (pictured above, and see also here). I’m including fiction, poetry, and graphic novels (in that order). No nonfiction, but basically just because none really made the cut. No RPG books—most of those were reviewed in the same post, so there’s no reason to go over it all over again. In no particular order, here were my favorite reads from …
For this last bimonthly installment of my recent reading for 2025, I’m including RPG stuff here on this page, since there isn’t a lot of it. It’s at the end, so that those interested can find it easily, while those who aren’t interested can leave the page once they hit that bit. Ooops, I never finished the RPG book I was reading, so… I’ve moved that to my first post for next year. Anyway, here’s the last of my reading for 2025.
Here’s what I read in September and October of this year! I didn’t really read any RPG-related stuff in the past couple of months, at least not cover-to-cover, so this will be the only readings post for these months.
I recently posted about the fiction and nonfiction I red in July/August here. That’s only half the story, though: I also tore through a bunch of RPG books this past couple of months—mostly at the end of June and going into August—and that’s what I’m going to discuss in this post. (I’ve split this the two posts up because I know some people are more interested in reading about RPG books, and some aren’t at all.)