Recently read:

The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norman Juster. I can't believe I've waited so long to read this one — it's been on my list since I was ten. It's an excellent little book; I often had to catch my breath at how perfectly the puzzle pieces fit together, how clever and funny it all was. Some of Juster's conceits reminded me of Calvino — the invisible city, the boy who never touches the ground til he grows up — except that it's 1000 times better than anything I've read by Calvino.

From that Place and Time, A Memoir, 1938-47, by Lucy Dawidowicz. I was at first very excited to read a whole book by someone who went to my high school; she even talks about it:

Meanwhile, in 1928, I entered Hunter College High School, then an all-girls' elite high school, known for its rigorous curriculum which required four years of English, three years of mathematics and Latin, two years of French or German, as well as biology and physics. As for history, all I can summon up is the unhappy memory of an American history course which consisted of tables of railroads (names, dates, and mileages) and of tariffs (names, dates, and the imports on which duties were imposed).
The English courses mattered most to me and they nurtured my love for literature, poetry especially. We had some splendid teachers, who introduced us to the English poets from Shakespeare to Swinburne. All women, a few of them became the objects of those prelesbian crushes endemic to all-girls' schools. On our own, we discovered contemporary poets, notably Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose verses fed my romantic imagination. T. S. Eliot was still an unknown name to me.
Reading spurred me to writing, especially to poetry. I was soon admitted into the school's literary clique, and joined the staff of Argus, the school's literary journal, becoming its editor in my senior year. Through Argus, I was introduced to the excitement of printing, the clutter of the printing shop and the clatter of its linotype machines and presses. I felt very important as I read and corrected galley proofs, my fingers smudged with printer's ink.

The rest of the book is extremely absorbing and (like many memoirs, I suspect) a very fast read. I only wish her sketches of people were more complete. Perhaps she spreads herself too thin, out of a sense of duty — she gives a page or two each to about thirty people, so that the reader ends up with a blurred impression of even the most interesting characters. Photographs might have helped.
I'd thought this was going to be a complete change from the Iliad, but on the very first page Dawidowicz likens Jewish Vilnius to Troy. It was strange to read how hatred of Germany kept her up at night just days before going to Germany, and thinking, as usual, how much I love Germany.

Twilight Sleep, by Edith Wharton. Not one of her best; in fact at some points I couldn't help suspecting she hadn't bothered to re-read what she had written. But I'll say no more, since I'm a great fan of Wharton's. I recommend The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, four novellas of Old New York (in particular The Spark, and the novella that begins with a fire in a hotel on Christmas day), but NOT Ethan Frome or The Age of Innocence. The Reef is excellent, but I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction; it's Edith Wharton's The Waves: humorless, extreme, relentlessly inward-looking, and very beautiful and moving. But not for the uninitiated.

Le Nozze di Cadmo e Armonia, di Roberto Calasso. I really wanted to like this one. Calasso takes his myths seriously, on their own terms, and writes about them without jargon. But I'm afraid he's incapable of being organized. Not that I think literary criticism ought to have an argument, and I understand that everything is connected to everything else, but still! Think of the poor reader! His prose is never less than melodramatic; his favorite words are "first," "last," "only," "never before," "never after," "everything," "nothing," "without equal," "alone among." It's like playing everything in vibrato. Sooner or later one becomes petulant and pedantic: "We have no knowledge of a more mysterious smile than the one that rumpled the forehead of the lord of the dead." "Are you quite sure? Have you made a list of mysterious smiles, and compared them?" Often I couldn't help laughing, as when I read, "We owe it to that laugh if the world has not yet fallen to pieces." But he has an even more annoying habit than mere hyperbole: hyperbolic paradoxes. I felt like he wanted to take my breath away, to knock me out, and he would use torches, acrobats, and special effects if he could. So I can't recommend this book, but I can't deny that I've learned plenty from it (though I probably would have done better just to browse through the Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World — yes, encyclopedia prose would be just the thing after this wild ride. There are two excellent ones online: the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Jewish Encyclopedia, both written in stately late nineteenth-century English. The ODCW, being still in print, is not online.)