Paradiso- Dante  (1321) 
Got busy on the translation this month and finished the third book (canticle) of the Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

But because there are so many cantos, I kept the recap here to much shorter summaries than the fuller explanations I included in previous months. 

 I started the journey back in May 2024. I had originally intended to read the Divine Comedy in Italian, but it turned out to be so much more difficult than I had thought, that I was forced to actually translate it in order to really understand it. I finished Inferno in Sept 2024; finished Purgatorio in April 2025 and now, after nearly a year and a half, I have finished Paradiso, and therefore, the entire Divine Comedy.  

I am REALLY happy to be done with this, even though I think the effort will turn out to be one of the more worthwhile exercises I’ve put myself through.  

Here are summaries of the remaining cantos of Paradiso. 

Canto 25 
The eighth sphere: the fixed stars- mystics cont. 
Dante is questioned by the apostle James on the second of the three theological virtues: hope. The apostle John joins them, at which point Dante is struck blind. 

Canto 26 
The eighth sphere: the fixed stars- mystics cont. 
While Dante is still blinded temporarily, John questions Dante on love, the third of the theological virtues. After Dante answers satisfactorily, Beatrice clears his eyes, and upon regaining his sight, Dante notices a fourth light among them, Adam. He asks Adam four questions, which Adam responds to. 

Canto 27 
The eighth sphere: the fixed stars- mystics cont. 
Dante, having passed the third and final test, is approved by Peter. Peter then speaks against the corruption of the Papacy before Beatrice and Dante leave the eighth sphere and ascend to the ninth, the Primum Mobile- realm of the angels. Dante has moved beyond the physical creation to the spiritual world. Beatrice speaks against the greed of man, which corrupts. 

Canto 28 
The ninth sphere: the Primum Mobile- the angels cont. 
In the Primum Mobile, Dante sees a point of intense light, surrounded by ten increasingly distant concentric circles. Beatrice explains the representation of the physical universe and this representation of God and his creation. She then gives the hierarchy of angels. 

Canto 29 
The ninth sphere: the Primum Mobile- the angels cont. 
Still in the Primum Mobile, Beatrice talks to Dante about the angelic orders. She explains the creation as a single instance and contradicts some teachings that have made their way into the church, speaking against the tendency of those in the church who invent false doctrines solely to be recognized as thinkers.  

Canto 30 
The ninth sphere: the Primum Mobile- the angels cont. 
The tenth sphere: the Empyrean 

Dante and Beatrice move from the ninth sphere, the Primum Mobile, to the tenth and final level, the Empyrean, a purely spiritual level described in terms of light. Dante’s poetic resources fail him when trying to describe Beatrice’s beauty. Here Dante sees the river of light, and the heavenly hosts arrayed in the form of a rose.  

Canto 31 
The tenth sphere: the Empyrean, cont. 
The heavenly rose shape is an enormous stadium. Dante finds that Beatrice is no longer with him. Bernard of Clairvaux has taken her place to accompany Dante through the final stages.  

Canto 32 
The tenth sphere: the Empyrean, cont. 
Bernard points out some of the notable saints among those in the rose/stadium, explaining the layout of the rose as he goes. Dante is curious why the inclusion of infants, there through none of their own merit, could be assigned to different levels. Bernard answers this then turns Dante’s attention to Mary, whose light will prepare him to finally look into the light of Christ. 

Canto 33 
The tenth sphere: the Empyrean, cont. 
Bernard prays to Mary that Dante would be granted strength to see into God’s light. Dante then is given grace to look into this light, where he sees symbols of the Trinity. The canto finishes with Dante’s assurance that he has turned back to God. 

War- Azar Gat  (2006) 
A look at why humans engage in the act of war. This book is divided in three major parts. The first covers tribal local warfare and the evolutionary reasons for how and why humans fought. 

The second part covers the period when humanity moved from hunter-gatherer to pastoral and herding societies. It shows the development of society and the influences that shaped how our evolutionary motivations were translated into the new paradigm. The time period is from the first sedentary settlements, up to the state and empire stages of societies. 

The third part covers the modern state and the economic ramifications of warfare. 

I was impressed by the book and find the topic interesting.  

In the Shadow of Vesuvius- Jordan Lancaster  (2005) 
The book is called a cultural history of Naples. It covers five broad periods of time: Ancient Naples, Medieval Naples, Spanish Naples, Bourbon Naples, and finally Italian Naples. 

Sing, Unburied, Sing- Jesmyn Ward  (2017) 
This was another novel that was listed as a modern classic, but just didn’t provide what I was looking for- which is information to help me fill out gaps in my understanding of the world.  

Now, I should acknowledge that it probably could fill in some such gaps, since I’m ignorant about a whole host of things, but that the things it would fill in, I’m not particularly concerned with. For example, I could read books on engineering that would “fill in gaps in my understanding”…. But I’m not concerned with gaps in my engineering knowledge.  

So… I’ll pull some examples from Wikipedia on the themes of the novel. 

The afterlife of slavery in America and Racial relations: I feel like this is a theme of EVERY book written by black Americans…at least those considered ‘important’. I don’t denigrate that it is important, but every book on every such list written by black American authors, I just assume up front that’s going to be the main theme. 

Family: the family is a mess. The black mom’s a drug addict, the white dad’s in prison, the kids are taken care of by the black mom’s parents; the older boy has to take care of the younger sister because mom is absentee and irresponsible. Wikipedia says these elements bring the disassociation from responsibilities through drug use, and the parentification of children in the face of absentee parents as themes. Ok. That’s not a gap in my knowledge that I needed to have filled. It doesn’t add to my understanding of the world.  

Human-Animal relationships: Wikipedia says “the relationship between humans and animals plays a major role in this novel…focuses on the differences between humans and animals and at times blurs the lines between the two. It forces the reader to be conscious of the tragic nature of an animal’s life….and what these lives might mean in connection with human lives.” So…..don’t eat meat? I’m not sure what to even do with this. I mean the obvious thing in relation to slavery is don’t treat people like they are sub-human, but that, again, isn’t a gap in my knowledge that I needed to fill in.  

Life and Death: concerning death, Wikipedia gives the example “the death scene (at the beginning of the story when JoJo’s grandfather kills a goat) looms over the characters, reminding them of the constant presence of death in their lives, how it continues to affect them, and eventually will take them from this world.” This kind of “analysis” seems silly to me. I mean I could make the same type of comments about depicting a character going to the bathroom: ‘which looms over the characters’ lives reminding them that they must constantly purge the detritus of accumulated capitalist consumerism and wipe their butts to leave no trace behind of their consumption’.  

Song and singing: the title: Sing, unburied, sing, seems to be, in the book, a reference to those slaves that died violent deaths, to tell their stories so they could pass on to peace in some sort of undefined afterlife. This I could genuinely accept as something like: you gotta deal with the past before you can move on. The novel itself is short on what exactly that means. Wikipedia says the novel connects the natural and supernatural world through singing, but that doesn’t really mean much. We are told singing is an important part of African-American history, as it played a part in the transmission of African culture. But, singing played this part in nearly every pre-literate culture the world over, and…. this information doesn’t fill in any gaps for me. It once again feels like Wikipedia is searching to find something they can say to make the work sound more important than it is.  

Water: Wikipedia says that “water symbolizes the process of nurturing and developing”. The evidence for this is said to be one of the main characters, JoJo, mentioning that he is thirsty. Which would point to the fact that JoJo was not being nurtured and developed… or something. “Even the setting in the Mississippi Delta may suggest the importance of water in the novel”, I am informed by Wikipedia. Now without Wikipedia pointing this out to me, I would never have gotten this from, you know, just reading the novel. But just as important, explaining that water symbolizes the process of nurturing and developing, and claiming that as one of the themes, just isn’t an important point to make. The book makes it very literally clear that the kids are not being nurtured or developed by their terrible parents. There is no depth to claiming water as a symbol of this.  

All of the Wikipedia thematic analysis feels like post hoc justification for this novel being important. And when I really think of what it says are “themes”, my response is to think that it all feels very weak.  

As for the story itself, it was exceptionally easy to read. I went through it in a day and a half. No problems as a novel, I just didn’t get what I usually hope to get out of my reading. 

Gilead- Marilynne Robinson  (2004) 
Written a series of observations by a 76 year old dying preacher, to his 7-year old son. The father feels he will never get the chance to really know his son, so he writes his thoughts down. This book is a lot better than I had thought it would be; touching on relationship, and spiritual advice. It’s probably of much more interest to me as a Christian than it would be to someone who isn’t, but I really enjoyed it. 

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets- Svetlana Alexievich  (2013) 
The book is a series of interviews with people living in the time after the fall of the Soviet Union. The title refers to the sense that they are each living with the old days, Soviet history; stuck in a rut of past ideals that never really idealized. They recite old slogans, the old communist beliefs that many of them held and even worked for. In the middle of their belief, they recount the horrors of what the regime did, but can’t seem to attribute those acts to the ideology itself, only to people that were trying to implement Marxism. It’s like their memories, ideas, and personal identity remain formed by these old ideals passed down to them, shaped by official stories and propaganda rather than by purely individual experience. Their history isn’t really their own, it is handed down secondhand. 

The book is divided into two main sections: the first is called On the Consolation of the Apocalypse, and deals with the fall of the Soviet Union. The paradox of there being consolation in the apocalypse is due to the fact that many inside the Soviet Union looked forward to freedom, but saw that only in terms of a slightly more free socialism, where they would still be provided everything, but have just a touch more openness. The stories are jarring for how much love the story-tellers would show for the theories of communism, even while they spoke of its horrors. 

The second section is called the Charms of Emptiness, and tell stories of the emptiness so many felt with the disappearance of communist ideology, and the market system that replaced it. People had lived for decades with the ideal that capitalism was empty materialism while the socialism being built was true community. Even if the Soviet citizens recognized flaws in their socialism, they recognized that capitalism neither promised, nor delivered, a larger purpose that they were used to.  

Freedom turned out to require responsibility for maintaining one’s own compass and life, and people who had lived for generations in servitude to the state and communist ideology were unprepared, in general, to know what to do with it. 

One breakdown said that the first part is about the death of meaning, and the second is about the struggle to live without it. 

Half of a Yellow Sun- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  (2006) 
The novel is set during the Nigerian civil war and takes its title from the short-lived Igbo republic’s flag, which had half of a yellow sun on it. The outbreak of civil war displays a moral descent where three tribes: hausa, yoruba, and igbo, who only recently lived as neighbors, begin to murder each other. This atrocity starts suddenly, but the ethnic identities are deeply ingrained, and while in stable times, they are overlooked, when stressors appear, they activate those dormant divisions. The groups begin to see each other as threats to their own collective survival. This dehumanization happens through fear, where ordinary behavior is seen as deceit, silence as conspiracy, and even reluctance to participate in your own sides exaggerations is read as treason. 

One of the centers of the initial part of the story is the intellectual justification for breaking the current status quo. Britain had forced the modern state of Nigeria into existence for its own financial gain, and Britains manipulation of the balance of power had led to an imbalance, which those in the minority read as unjust. The fight for justice turned into an actual rebellion, and the counter-rebellion became the civil war. There was perhaps too much faith in the project of independence, and not enough concern for the tribal divisions that were lying under the surface. Political theories could not change human nature, and when those ideals met the raw realities of war and human weakness, the result is devastation. 

The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini  (2001) 
Story about Amir and Hassan, two Afghan kids. Amir’s father is a successful Pashtun man in Kabul, and Hassan is the son of his father’s Hazara servant. Amir and Hassan are really best friends, but while Hassan saves Amir from being picked on by the neighborhood bully, Amir does not return the favor for Hassan later on, when he is cornered by those same bullies and subjected to a humiliating sexual assault. Amir’s cowardice haunts him and things are never the same between the two boys. As the political situation in Afghanistan descends into chaos, Amir and his father emigrate to the US, and settle in the San Francisco area.  

Years later, Amir receives a notice from a family friend, now in Pakistan, that Amir should come back to rescue Hassan’s young son, because the Taliban have murdered both Hassan and his wife.  

Amir gets into Kabul, finds that the boy has been taken as a pet by the local Taliban commander, who happens to be the same bully that had raped his friend so many years ago. The commander says he will allow Amir to take the boy, but only if he can walk out of the room. A fight commences and Amir is being badly beaten, but the boy, who is good with a slingshot, puts the eye of the commander out, and they both escape. 

It is a long, dangerous trip back to the US, but Amir and his wife decide to adopt the little boy, since they have been unable to have a child themselves.  

The Book Thief- Markus Zusak  (2005) 
The book thief is Liesel Meminger, an 8 year-old German girl in 1937 Munich, who, on the way to being given up because her Mom couldn’t take care of her, watches her brother die on the winter train. They stop to bury him, and the grave digger drops his book- the grave-diggers handbook, in the snow. She takes the book, despite not being able to read, because it was the last tangible thing she had to associate with her brother. The new family takes her in, and her new Papa teaches her how to read. She begins to filch other books over time, and eventually becomes a writer. She befriends Max, a Jewish man whom her father shelters.  

The story is narrated by Death, and it’s actually quite funny in spots. The book isn’t the usual thing I’m looking for in novels, but it was fun and a good story, so I’d give it five stars.