Imagine if our culture dictated that each member of a couple living together had to independently create a brief record of their thoughts about each day. Now imagine the couple to be Melville scholars, each researching the same subject separately and posting their daily learnings. Now imagine those mini-reviews of each day’s research to be probing and often hilarious and deeply revealing about their concerns for each other and their commitment to their projects. Imagine as well that those conclusions alternate and are spaced on the pages like little bite-size poems revealing their deepest truths. And imagine a love story. Genius. Must reading. The best book of the year.