[John Riley]

I read from the beginning to the end. When I was younger I would often, if the book or play deserved it, reread it. I can't read as ferociously as I did when younger and I miss it. I read fiction and nonfiction almost equally, although lately it's been more fiction. I am reading a nonfiction book now that I recommend for poets--The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton. It's full of poetry. The last novels were The Door by Magda Szabo and All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg. I do want to recommend them both and also August, a novella by Christa Wolf. I love novellas and this is the best one I've read in some time.

Do others like to read letters? I've been dipping in and out of Kafka's Letters to Milena. I can't take too many of them at one time. The letters are as brilliant, or maybe more so, than his aphorisms.

Also, I don't read one thing at a time and I have no idea why so much of what I read these days is written by women. It keeps happening. I may be a heterosexual girly boy.