Too Little, Too Soon

In the midst of a greater writing project and preparations for a transatlantic move, I managed to read only two books in April. As with my top two books in March, Twilight and Prophet are vastly different books. Both are well-written, and both have proved, in the months and years since their initial publications, groundbreaking volumes within the world of contemporary literature: each has initiated its own sub-genre and has been imitated multiple times.

Instead of selecting one of these two volumes to serve as my monthly favourite, I'd like to introduce you to a fascinating and occasionally frustrating little volume that has received a tremendous amount of my attention this month and is, in many ways, my actual favourite book read this month (although I'm reading it for school).

To those of you in search of a slightly unique read, may I highly recommend St John's, Cambridge, Manuscript S.23. Compiled in the early 1600s, this lovely little volume contains poems by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne, and many of their contemporaries, and it is freely available online in digital facsimile through the Scriptorium project. In it you will find some lovely familiar poems and a number of early modern favourites that have been mostly forgotten in the intervening centuries.