What I Read in January 2026 – Robustious rothers in rural rivo rhapsodic.

I will be in London in early March, so my reading has been v v British, more so than usual.  If only I wanted to write anything.

 

NOT SHAKESPEARE AND ALSO SHAKESPEARE

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595?), William Shakespeare

Every Man in His Humour (Italian version) (1598) &

Every Man in His Humour (London version) (1616), Ben Jonson – discussed here.

The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599), Thomas Dekker – More of London on the London stage.  I will write this one up momentarily.

Poems (???, earlier than 1618 anyway), Sir Walter Ralegh

Nothing Like the Sun (1964), Anthony Burgess – Shakespeare via Joyce via Burgess, with everyone enjoying their puns.  Not quite my Shakespeare, but convincing enough.  My recent reading demystified Burgess’s novel – oh, he read G. B. Harrison’s Elizabethan Plays and Players (1940), just like I did.  The quotation I the title is from Ch. IV, p. 26.  Young Shakespeare has been drinking.

 

FICTION

Men at Arms (1952), Evelyn Waugh – The British at war, but it is the Phoney War, when no one knew what was going on.  Easily worth reading for its humor and details, but post-war Waugh is a more conventional writer than the author of, for example, the outrageous Put Out More Flags (1942).

The Sound of the Mountain (1949-54), Yasunari Kawabata – please see this post.

The Kindly Ones (1962), Anthony Powell – More of the same.  The war begins in the next novel, thus my turn back to Waugh.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), P. D. James – A fine Cambridge-set mystery often taught by Rohan Maitzen.

 

POETRY

The Shield of Achilles (1955), W. H. Auden

For the Unfallen (1959), Geoffrey Hill

 

IN FRENCH & PORTUGUESE

L'Ignorant (1958), Philippe Jaccottet

O Hóspede de Job (The Guest of Job, 1963), José Cardoso Pires – Perhaps about the exhaustion of a dictatorship.  Not available in English.  Possibly slightly too hard for me but I fought through it. The Ballad of Dog’s Beach (1982) is easy to recommend to readers of Leonardo Sciascia and similar anti-mysteries.

Les mots (The Words, 1964), Jean-Paul Sartre – Sartre’s childhood memoir, with long sections on his love of reading and writing.  The classics came from his stern grandfather, rather more trashy stuff from his indulgent mother.  In a different life he would have been a pulp adventure writer.  Sartre, the adult, is often a repulsive character, but the childhood version is a sympathetic, charming little fellow.

I also read, while listening, the lyrics to Caetano Veloso 1968 and 1969 albums, both titled Caetano Veloso.  The former is especially rich in classics.  A valuable exercise I should do more often.