Faculty & students from the department of literatures in English tell us a little bit about what they are currently reading in 2022, what they plan to begin reading, and their favorite books and authors.
J. Robert Lennon – Professor of English
I’ve been re-reading some short novels in translation for my fall class, notably César Aira’s hilarious The Literary Conference and Elena Ferrante’s ludicrously intense The Days of Abandonment, still my favorite of hers. I read Yuri Herrera’s terrific new collection of very short science-fiction stories. I’ve also been reading a bunch of commercial thrillers and mysteries for fun, and to inform my own foray into crime writing.
Banafsheh Hussain ’25 (English Major, College Scholar)
Recently, I’ve been rereading the Daevabad trilogy: it’s a fantasy series with incredibly detailed world-building based on Islamic myths about djinn and humans. At the same time, I’ve also been reading Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong, because I love poetry and am trying to read more contemporary works. Finally, I’ve been reading Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu because I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell over the summer and loved it! Although I’m reading many fantasy-adjacent books right now, I go through different moods when it comes to my reading list. I’m anticipating some classic murder mysteries next!
Alice Rhee – MFA Lecturer
Reading poetry is essential year-round, but feels especially anchoring during Ithaca’s colder months. Nisha Ramayya’s States of the Body Produced by Love is a brilliant collection of poetry, essays, and images. I’m also returning to Anxiety of Words, a collection of poetry by contemporary Korean women. The fantastic English translations by poet Don Mee Choi are accompanied by the original Korean text, so I can practice my Korean reading skills while marveling at the complex, radical language and imagery. I also just retrieved a copy of Elaine Castillo’s novel America is Not the Heart from the library, which I’m very excited to start.
Gregory Londe – Assistant Professor
I'm toggling between Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth's The Absentee and her nephew, the economist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth's Mathematical Psychics, both of which tell stories about morality and tenants' rights from different angles. F.Y.E. tries to apply calculus to morals—winds up conducting bizarre experiments where he's observing wasps for hours or calculating statistical variations in "gusts of passion" in Virgil's hexameters. On repeat always: genius colleagues! Alice Fulton’s Coloratura, Juliana Hu Pegues’s Space-Time Colonialism, Chelsea Frazier’s “The Creation of God,” Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s new hits in Poetry. I’m on volume 20 of manga The Promised Neverland and, I’m dramatizing Julio Torres’s I Want to Be a Vase to my 2-year-old by request.
Sophia Gottfried ’25 (English and Philosophy Major)
I tend to enjoy a good combination of books with poetic language and ones that explore how to live a meaningful life. The former I just enjoy because I like pretty multi-syllabic words, and the latter I tend to gravitate toward because of an interest I have in ontological philosophy. A book I recently read and enjoyed, which has to be my favorite genre of fiction I've read in the last five years and maybe ever, is This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. It's a romance between two people on opposite sides of a "time war" who write letters to each other through increasingly elaborate codes. Another one of my favorite books is The Joyous Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, which is a collection of aphorisms that deal with the author's experience with illness, fatal flaws in Western morality, and art.