A good day for my mailbox today: no bills or junk, Poetry, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. All that kept it from being a perfect day was the absence of an acceptance (or, in the absence of an acceptance, at least a copy of Light Quarterly to guarantee my reading pleasure until Harry comes out next week).

In Poetry (the July/August issue), Brad Leithauser, Wendy Cope, and Richard Wilbur are among the many writers whose work I look forward to reading. In the New York Review (the July 19 issue), Freeman Dyson, Ian Buruma, Garry Wills, Tim Parks, and Thomas Powers all have essays, AND there is an excerpt from J. M. Coetzee's forthcoming novel, Diary of a Bad Year (which is listed as "to be published by Viking next January, but is being published by Harvill Secker in September). In the New Yorker (July 9 & 16), there's another Tim Parks essay, as well as an essay by Louis Menand.

Where to start?? I ended up starting with the New York Review, and the opening essay by Dyson. A great read over soup for lunch.