La Vita Nuova (Poems of Youth) by Dante Alighieri and translated by Barbara Reynolds

This collection of poetry and commentary serves two purposes: it documents Dante's love for Beatrice, from their first meeting to beyond her death, and it allows Dante to offer his theory of poetic composition. Dante justifies writing poetry in the vernacular, rhyming lines of verse, and using figurative language by its subject: if the poet aspires to convey a deeper meaning, these techniques are legitimate. He forces readers to look beyond the mechanics of the sonnet form--often his notes about the division of the poem appear in different places than the traditional octet/sestet split; thus, he demonstrates the tension inherent in sonnets between prescribed form and inspired content. The poetry after Beatrice's death is particularly moving: news of her death forces him to break off a canzone, and then he offers less guidance on how to read the sonnets (one of which even starts in two different ways). He demonstrates a transition in his love: while at the start of the work, he loves Beatrice as a woman on earth, by the end of the sequence he realizes that she can become a heavenly guide to divine love (in fact, she becomes the Beatrice of the Divine Comedy). A lovely and thought-provoking collection of poetry.

The Symposium by Plato translated by Walter Hamilton

This dialogue reflects on the nature of love. It uses a fairly involved frame narrative set up--we hear about the party third-hand--to report only the most significant speeches. We get many different views on the nature and purpose of love, but the dialogue especially shows off Socrates's wisdom (which he displays only after several other people have spoken on the topic). There are mythological explanations of love, but the most convincing and beautiful account of love asserts that at its best, it encourages people to become more virtuous and to pursue excellence. A lovely piece of work--I wish I could have read it in the original Greek instead of in translation.

Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings by Joel Chandler Harris

This book presents a nostalgic version of plantation life in the slave South. Uncle Remus, a formerly enslaved man who still lives with the white family that owned him before the Civil War, tells the family's young son a series of stories about animals--Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and Brer Tarrypin and their friends. In many of these stories, although Brer Fox or Brer Bear is stronger and a natural predator, they fail to catch and eat Brer Rabbit, who is clever enough to escape their plans and to live to torment them another day. The stories preserve Georgia folklore, but the frame narrative tends to reinforce the nostalgic and misleading idea that life was better in the Old South. These stories are the basis for the Disney movie Song of the South, the first movie to combine live action film and animation--and a movie which Disney executives now refuse to sell on the basis of its racist nostalgia for the Old South. These same executives don't mind making money off the franchise however: as the popular Splash Mountain ride in both Walt Disney World and Disneyland is based on one of the Brer Rabbit stories.

The Conjure Stories by Charles W. Chesnutt

These stories are told in a frame narrative: a white couple, John and Annie, move from Ohio to North Carolina in an attempt to improve her health and to make money farming. When they arrive in the South, they find their plantation is home to Uncle Julius, an African American who was born into slavery and who tells a series of stories about life before the Civil War. Although Uncle Julius may seem like an Uncle Remus figure, John quickly realizes that Julius's stories have a point: he tells the stories as a way of attempting to manipulate John and Annie. While John sees the smaller point, he lacks the emotional intelligence to see the larger ones: Julius's stories expose that although slavery is over, many of the same inequalities still persist in the South. The stories are folktales in which conjure features heavily: many have enslaved and white characters seeking redress for wrongs through magical means (metamorphoses into animals, trees, and other people are common). This conjure (which echoes the Latin for with the law) metaphorically demonstrates what slavery did legally and what Jim Crow statutes did quasi-legally: they turned people into things and established color lines which it might mean death to cross. Julius's stories invite John and the reader to transgress and cross these lines, to imagine what life is like outside of ourselves. While John has difficulty seeing this offer, much of the hope in the stories is that the reader can do what John cannot.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

This book is an amazing tour de force: the world is crumbling, and seven strangers are called upon to go make the Shrike pilgrimage--a journey to the strange world of Hyperion, where the Time Tombs go backward in time, to face the Shrike. One will be granted his wishes, and the others will die. To pass the time on their journey, these pilgrims tell of their connections to Hyperion. In the race against the Ousters (a differently-evolved branch of humanity which is seen as uncivilized and threatens Hyperion), though, not everyone is who he seems. The individual stories are great and the frame narrative is gripping. There's also a lot of interest in both Chaucer and Keats, which makes the story rich with literary allusions. An absolute must-read.