Enjoyment can't help but praise.
I hit another goldmine of wisdom and amusement in 2022, and the book/reading list below was a large part of that.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I love this poem. It is so weird, musical, pious, beautiful, framed if not chiastic, supplying what Medieval chivalry needed to be saved from itself.
Journey to the West. I am reading it for the first time in English, in Anthony Yu's excellent translation. This means I understand a little more of the poems -- the narrative is not so difficult in 17th Century Chinese. An amazingly rich book, and hilariously funny at times, but also a one-stop shopping experience for understanding traditional Chinese culture.
The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni. Auspiciously described as the second-best Italian fiction, after Dante! Much mellower, though, yet shining a vivid, humane and Christian light on life and death in northern Italy about when Matteo Ricci was serving the Chinese court in Beijing. This novel also helps explain The Godfather.
Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy. One of the funniest books I have ever read, which also implies -- profound. Percy may have written this book half a century ago, but he had our number.
The Talisman, Sir Walter Scott. Apparently it is bad taste on my part to enjoy this old mash-up of chivalry, love, magic, warring pieties, mystery, valiant horses and faithful hounds, and every other romantic cliché that was to come. But I did, immensely, despite being bored by my previous sally into Scott.
Metamorphoses, Ovid. Like fudge, good, but best taken in small doses.
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Like brownies, delicious in the right mood, and can be eaten in slightly larger doses. But laced with what? Slightly hallucinogenic, one of the strangest novels ever written.