Summer Reading List 2010

I wonder a bit at the utility of making a Summer Reading List. Last year, though I read a lot, what I read only about half resembled the list. Perhaps such an activity is less about a plan than a general goal: “I want to read roughly this amount, and what I read will likely include several of the following.”

Alternatively, making lists is just fun. So, here goes.

Paradiso - Dante (trans. Allen Mandelbaum). I’ve already started this one, actually. Having finished and greatly enjoyed Inferno and Purgatorio, Paradiso is obligatory. Reading a parallel-text edition only makes it more fun.

Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima (trans.  Michael Gallagher).

The Cantos - Ezra Pound.

The Pillow Book - Sei Shounagon (trans. Ivan Morris).

Caritas in Veritate - Pope Benedict XVI. Actually, I intend to read several papal encyclicals, but this is the largest of them, and my highest priority.

A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy - ed. Wing-Tsit Chan. I’m mostly interested in the Confucians, but it should be an enjoyable book.

I also plan on reading several comics, but I tend to choose those even more arbitrarily than prose. Series I’ve already started and will finish, though, include Masami Tsuda’s Kare Kano, and Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack and Ode to Kirihito.