I read the first canto of The Divine Comedy 's Paradiso . Of course it's a Christian fantasy, but I'm looking for ideas for Pure Lands. I thought that was the first book, but it starts with the Inferno . I thought it was those two, but there's Purgatorio . "It is widely considered to be the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature." My grandmother thought she would have wings when she went to heaven. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was born in Florence. He was exiled, and that caused him to write his poems. Similar to Machiavelli, who was also banished. Or Montesquieu who simply retired to the country. Getting into the Christian system, albeit with an eloquent writer, feels like it could be a slog. Like reading Freud to get his whole system, it's just quite a lot, and it's not a coherent system. I'm OK with the systems of Taoism and Buddhism because they don't feel that huge, drawn out, though I don...