Matthew Sciarappa

I suppose I should address two things here: 1) I’ve been reading more historic poems than just The Faerie Queene this year. 2) This was a choice inspired not by the forthcoming film but after completing Hades II. 🤭✨ Regardless, Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation of Homer’s THE ODYSSEY has made for my favorite read of this epic so far. 🌊🏺 I had been anticipating this translation of #TheOdyssey since it was announced. Mendelsohn’s work on C.P. Cavafy’s poetry is so remarkable—so morbid and formal, yet bingeworthy and lyrical. Here we find a similar devotion to tradition and lyricism: lines rendered closer in length and rhythm to Homer’s. And yet, this might be the most accessible version of the text I’ve read. Musicality proves to be an aid rather than a hurtle in capturing Homer’s cyclical, entwining tale. I’ll say it thousands of times, I’m not a scholar (at the end of the day, I can’t speak to whims of classicists), but as both a poetry enthusiast and reader of fiction, I had so much fun! & Shoutout to Penelope, a real one tbh.

Laura Spinney collects global historic and scientific data to circumnavigate the Spanish Flu in PALE RIDER. 🩺🌍 The paperback of #PaleRider was published in 2018, and within its end chapters are detailed explanations of how nations could be equipped—legislatively, medically, infrastructurally—for a next global pandemic. I feel like reading this in 2026, seemingly ages from March of 2020, these passages feel less “haunting” and more disheartening. Just another failure of people in power to value human life over conspiracy, prejudice, and profit. But anyway… . . I picked this book up chasing my curiosity (and with a rec from @jenjelinkova ). Luckily, it’s a perfect primer. To craft her book, Spinney absconds with linear timeliness and instead, via a constellation of sources, addresses in conceptual entries how the Spanish flu emerged, what made it so deadly, how different nations attempted to subdue it, how religion of the time compounded events, what industrial advantages some nations had over others, and so on. By breaking down this pandemic into concepts rather than dates, what is a complex, transcontinental horror feels (in just 300 pages) incredibly accessible.

Somehow, I finally finished Edmund Spenser’s THE FAERIE QUEENE. 👑🐉 Honestly, I don’t know what I’m expected to write for a post like this. #TheFaerieQueene was a white whale read for me, and finally attempting it has been a joy, but I’m left feeling like a bit of a fraud—I’m not a scholar, I have no fresh interpretations, and there were plenty of stanzas within these pages that left me head-scratching. I also understand no one expects anything of me regarding any of this, but after reading over 1,000 pages of late 16th century poetry, I feel like I should have more profound takeaways. Over the two months that I picked apart this epic, I would mention reading it to friends and without fail, I’d receive some sort of, “oh my god I read that in college… well, not all of it!” or (more simply), “lol why?” But I tried my best, and maybe I’ll revisit it again in the future. In the meantime I will place this book on my poetry shelf, a chunky and battered trophy of many days of eye strain! . . For those curious about my way into this book, I did the following: 1. Before each canto I would read a summary of the canto. 2. I would go through each stanza accordingly. 3. If I ever stumbled or came across an archaism or confusing passage, I would refer to the audiobook recording of it (read by David Timson) to try and better grasp phrasing or pronunciation—if I couldn’t fully understand the words, I could at least listen to the music. . . And ultimately, here are my thoughts: I don’t know what I expected going in, but I’m left enamored by the erratic, action-packed, high-fantasy, high-stakes world Spenser created. A clear predecessor of what in the genre we read today, each book is packed with varying bizarre encounters of wicked spells, hideous creatures, haunted castles, duels, treachery, temptation, yearning, and love. I enjoyed getting to know each Knight and their corresponding virtues. And the stanzas!! How Spenser pulled off each rhyme scheme felt like a total trick. Lastly, never in my life have I read the word “puissance” more times. . . I guess that’s all 🧚✨

EMPIRE OF THE ELITE by Michael M. Grynbaum was the perfect slice of pop nonfic to break my post-Robin Hobb hangover. 🧥💼 I’ve been wanting to read #EmpireOfTheElite since it came out, and I watched copies passing between colleagues at work. Working in publishing fosters a fascination with all print media, and many of the names dropped in this book are only one or two degrees of separation from our day to day lives (just last week, I was at a dinner for David Remnick). Grynbaum’s history of the Condé Nast media empire—fraught rise and tech-driven decline—pulls on nostalgic heartstrings, at once glamorizing and gossiping years of varying editors, deals, and publications. Primarily, he focuses on SI Newhouse, Tina Brown, and Anna Wintour, picking apart the timelines of The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Digest. I enjoyed this book so much. It’s very dishy.

Actually so wild to be here right now, finished with Robin Hobb’s The Realm of the Elderlings and the pure Dickensian sprawl of ASSASSIN’S FATE. 🐝🐺 Objectively I understand that #AssassinsFate and the entire last trilogy in this world is bizarre and unpaced and erratically focused. Bee’s Oliver Twist-style escape and recapture cycle, the Fool’s brash decisions only ever explained in hindsight, Fitz’s inability to let go of the gender binary, and the parade of cameos—little buttons to epic storylines. But this many books deep into a world, I can’t help but leave misty-eyed. I have treasured this series for several years and almost feel convinced to start at the beginning again. (And Malta mentioned, therefore 5 stars).

No books today 😌 Just favorites from a weekend at The Poster House and MoMA. Museum fatigue is more powerful than Sunday scaries 😤✨💪🏻

TRANSCRIPTION by Ben Lerner is a slim meditation on memory in a phone-reliant world. 🖊️📱 To read #Transcription is to indulge in rushed profundity. Page one has its narrator expressing how his daughter describes riding backward in a train car as “facing the past,” only to thematically call back to it on the other side of that very same page. If you’re willing to buy into this type of full-throttle, unprepared stinger, then you will have a great experience continuing on. Lerner’s sentences are clean; his descriptions are deliberate—this is clearly a writer determined to make as much use as possible of minimal economy. But there’s ultimately a certain part of my brain I feel like I have to turn off to avoid eye-rolling my way through. I feel too melancholy about the world, too ironic for such a lofty, philosophical engagement with the value of authenticity and documentation. So while some passages had me entranced, like the fluid blurring of timelines in the initial conversation between the narrator and his mentor, others left me feeling exhausted, like the arduous inclusion of child’s eating disorder. I understand why many will love this book, but for me, I’m not currently at a place in my life to appreciate its value.

SMALL BOAT by Vincent Delecroix (translated by Helen Stevenson) is a dazzlingly tense experiment in protocol & empathy. 🛟📟 I loved reading #SmallBoat in the same way I love reading play scripts. This is a richly psychological work, set within enclosed space. Based on a real catastrophe of a fatal border crossing along the English Channel, it considers the compounding forces that led to the disaster, voiced in three parts by a negligent French naval officer and a victim aboard the sinking vessel she failed to save. What compelled the string of events that resulted in 27 drownings is ruthlessly debated over 130 pages. Blame takes center stage. Was it mere negligence? weariness from the pressures of a thankless, vital job? prejudice and malice toward migrants? a neutral distribution of available resources? the political inequity that prompted populations fleeing in the first place? Regardless, the crux of dialogue comes down to a bid for empathy. The French naval officer waxes that “Empathy is an idiotic luxury indulged by people who do nothing and who are moved by the spectacle of suffering.“ Yet, she herself did nothing in the face of suffering and seems to be remorseless. . . Ultimately, this is the kind of short, gut-punching read that upon completion you want to flip to the beginning and start again. Its dazzling masquerade of rhetoric is a driving force, barreling you toward a hapless conclusion of a tragic mystery. I thought this was so sharp.

Happy Independent Bookstore Day! 📖🎈 6 stores, 7 books, plus 3 new audio credits purchased from Book Culture via Libro.fm 🎧 🧪 ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME IV by Solvej Balle (translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell) from Greenlight Bookstore 🥟 THE SUBTLE ART OF FOLDING SPACE by John Chu from Center for Fiction 🐴 HORSES by Jake Skeets from Books Are Magic (Montague) 🩳 THE WONDERFUL WORLD THAT ALMOST WAS by Andrew Durbin from McNally Jackson (SoHo) 🥢 HUNGER by Choi Jin-young (translated by Soje) & 🐦 KINGFISHER by Rozie Kelly from Three Lives Book Co. 🌃 JADE CITY by Fonda Lee from The Strand I’d have taken more pics, but it was rainy, and I was sleepy.

Across wars, uprisings, and occupations, LÁZÁR by Nelio Biedermann (translated by Jamie Bulloch) traces the decline of one Hungarian family. 🐴🤍 #Lázár is a novel profoundly concerned with viscera both physically and metaphorically: lush and intoxicatingly foul descriptions of muck, dirt, and bodily fluids color multiple scenes, reducing an otherwise aristocratic cast of characters to their basest selves; Lajos von Lázár, born at the start of the novel, has such translucent skin his sister Ilona can view his internal organs through it; and whether or not characters have endurance—the “guts”—for something is a frequent point of tension. No amount of wealth can allow characters to escape their physiology, and Biedermann’s theming is clear. The result is an attempt to humanize spectacle, to understand and empathize with this family’s fraught yet neutral existence. Each chapter is earnestly rendered, as amid crises, three generations descend into their most cowardly, insatiable, or passive selves. Compounded with the novel’s gothic, verging on enchanting, atmosphere, the reading experience is equal parts magnanimous and weighty. This is a very ambitious, very immersive debut with surprisingly classical textures and generous psychological insight.

Malta mentioned!! (!!) 🥲💕 I can’t believe that with FOOL’S QUEST by Robin Hobb, I’m almost done with the Realm of the Elderlings. 🐦‍⬛⚔️ #FoolsQuest, like many of Hobb’s middle books, is a bounty of court politics. Brilliantly tense, endlessly frustrating, utterly gasp-worthy. The rest is Fitz fucking around and finding out, The Fool desperate to go John Wick mode, and Bee enduring the weight of prophecy. The threat of winter looms over all, and by the end, we get a teasing intermingling of characters across the series that makes reading the prior 14 books feel all the more gratifying. But with this book in particular, we’ve come to understand that the biggest threat to our characters are the constraints of gender. So many plot points hinge on the fact that a girl may look boyish and vice versa. While the complexities of identity are intuitive to some characters, most are driven to delusion and violence at the thought of them. I need all of these characters to read some Judith Butler and move on to more pressing concerns of dragons, kidnappings, premonitions, war, and trade deals.

So sorry— I look v cute in these pictures, so it’s actually incredibly important and serious for me to post them all 😌📖 Book Con 2026. #TeamPRH