Update on what I’m reading

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Today, I provide a cross-post from one of my other blogs: An Unfinished Person (in an Unfinished Universe):

For today’s Thirsty Thursday, I provide a snapshot of what I’m reading:

Not pictured in order of importance, or listed in order of importance:

1. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff: On a reading group of which I am an erstwhile member on Shelfari, I first heard of this book. I’m about 70 or so pages into it and so far, so good. It’s a complex book about a young woman who returns to her hometown of Templeton, New York, which is based on Cooperstown, New York. She arrives pregnant and just as the town is discovering a monster on the shores of a nearby lake, but other monsters await in her family history.
2. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieren Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D.: O.C.D., by the way, stands for Discalced Carmelite Order, with discalced, meaning “barefoot or unshod”. My spiritual director gave me this book this morning at the concluding ceremony of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola that I just finished last week because she knew I already was reading The Living Flame of Love, also by St. John of the Cross. I look forward to reading this, although this won’t be a book I finish in a day or week or even a month. It might be several months or several years before I get through this one, because if any book is meant to be contemplated, it is definitely this one.
3. 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, selected and with an introduction by Billy Collins: This is one I’ve been perusing over the last month or so. Collins, former Poet Laureate of the U.S., helped start the Poetry 180 initiative, which brings clear, contemporary poems into the nation’s high schools, a poem for each day of the school year. For more on the project, see Poetry 180. This is the second collection from the project.
4. Sailing Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins: I saw this at the library only yesterday and decided to pick it up because I don’t think I’ve read this one. I may have perused it once on the shelf, but I don’t think I’ve read it.

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Filed under Books, Fiction, Nonfiction

Tags: Billy Collins, Books, Lauren Groff, Poetry, reading, St. John of the Cross