Three More Months of Reading

    Although I have slowed down my reading, I am being an okay reader. My goal for 2021 was 36 books but I only read 17. My goal I set for 2022 is 30 books. 

    In late September, I bought a book from Barnes & Noble that was on sale titled "William Shakespeare: Complete Plays" which I have started reading. There are 37 plays in the book. After reading two plays and being a spreadsheet guy (aka nerd), I figured I would find some rankings of the plays from best to worst to help me order my reading. The first list I found was a listing of play productions, from Most to Least. The second listing I found was a ranking by a group of experts from favorite to least favorite. Joining these lists together I have created a somewhat nice timeline for reading all 37 plays.

Shakespeare Plays

September 2021

The book only cost $7.95, a great deal for all you get. At first I was just going to read them in any order. Of course, the best place to start was with Romeo and Juliet. I should mention that reading the original plays can get somewhat confusing. Is that really English? But I was able to slowly get a pace. I will admit I did find a site that has the original play and modern words side by side. I do not usually use it but it does help with unidentifiable words. I wish Shakespeare would have used more stage directions for the characters like say it angrily, sarcastically, lovingly, etc.

Romeo and Juliet (A tragedy in Italy)

I gave this play a 3.5 (Great to Excellent). It is a classic and I know I had read it in High School. I also have seen a film or two of the story. When William calls a play a tragedy, there will be a lot of death! It was a great play to be read first. One of my first teenage loves was watching Juliet played by Olivia Hussey in the 1968 film version. Of course, West Side Story is just a modern retelling of the tragic romantic story.

October 2021

Since I enjoyed the first play so much, I decided to read three more in the month of October.

Hamlet (A tragedy in Denmark)

First up was Hamlet. I gave this play 4.0 (Excellent). I am a little biased since I really enjoyed the shorten version on Gilligan's Island when I was a kid. It was a musical. "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be..." sung to Carmen's Toreador Song. They say Hamlet is a story about a Great Dane, but apparently that is not Marmaduke. 

Of course the "To be or not to be" soliloquy is wonderful. In that speech, I love the line "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come." There was a booked titled "What Dreams May Come" that was turned into a movie with Robin Williams. I read the book and my mom borrowed the book before I knew she had cancer although she knew.

Macbeth (A tragedy in Scotland)

The next play was Macbeth.  I give it a 3.5 (Great to Excellent). I saw a movie when I was college age (late 1970s), and it was pretty tragic (and bloody too). I just looked it up; it was made in 1971 and was directed by Roman Polanski. This was just after his wife Sharon Tate, with unborn child, was murdered by the Manson family. Now I know why I have tragic memories from that movie. I also see that it was released in 2021 with Denzel Washington playing the lead. Did not see that one.

Julius Caesar (A tragedy in Rome Italy)

The third play in October was Julius Caesar. I give it a 3.5. Another I remember reading in High School and seeing a film. Another Tragedy with a lot of death. "Et Tu Brute." I guess politicians have not changed much in two thousand years. Although the play is titled Julius Caesar, Brutus speaks more than four times the lines than Caesar.

December 2021

No plays in November and only one in December. By this time I had starting reading other books again. They will be reviewed below.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Comedy in Athens Greece)

I give this only a 2.5 (Good to Great) because I was totally confused by all the weird character names, the weird setting, the drugs and falling in love, and the elves. I just consider it my "Pre-Christmas Week's Nightmare." BTW, this play lead the list for most performed Shakespearean plays with 180 major productions. I probably will give it a second chance, it is the least I can do for Puck!

January 2022

New year, a great time to start with some more Shakespeare. Completed two more in the first week.

Twelfth Night (Comedy in Illyria - modern Albania & Montenegro)

I was not familiar with this play but I give it a 4.0 (Excellent). Written as a Twelfth Night Entertainment for the close of Christmas, it is a story about a set of twins Viola & Sebastian, who are separated after a shipwreck. Viola, disguised as a man named Cesario, causes a true comedy of errors and misrepresentations.

While reading the play, I realized it was vaguely familiar including the names. I had seen the 2006 movie She's the Man, starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum. She dresses as her twin brother Sebastian to play on the Boy's soccer team at a prep school named Illyria. I do remember Bynes flashing her boobs at the end of the film to prove she was a female. I did not see that in Shakespeare's version.

King Lear (Tragedy in Britain)

This is my favorite Shakespeare play so far and I give it a 4.5 (Excellent to Memorable). I did use the

No Fear Shakespeare web site which has a modern translation. I would read a Act or scene and then reread the modern version to see if I understood. Since King Lear goes crazy during the play, I was confused early on by some of his rants which did not seem just. Then I realize a large portion of the play is about people using his darkness as a means to better their own future.

I had heard of this play but I had never read it before, or see any movies or TV shows. I see there have been many adaptations and may look some of them up. Again, a lot of people die!

Let's get to the books I have read recently...

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

This became the 40th in my bucket list of books I have to read. It was the fourth book by Dickens I have read and I gave it a rating of 3.5 (Great to Excellent). I felt it was a wonderful read and I enjoyed it almost as much as David Copperfield. It was published in 1861. The life story of the main character Pip, it includes themes of wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. I highly recommend it if you have never read it.

The Judge's List by John Grisham

When I bought the Shakespeare book, I saw that John Grisham had a new 2021 novel on the top selling list. I give the book a 3.0 (Great). This is the 8th book by Grisham I have read in the last 15 years. I always know it will be a great story and an easy read. And you do not want to be on that Judge's List.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Published in 1726, this book I gave a 3.5 (Great to Excellent) because it was just so creative. I know it was a well-known satire about the world, but it is presented in four parts as a travel-log of a ship's surgeon (who does become a Captain) as he travels to remote parts of the world. It is the 41st book in my bucket list.

Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput

His first voyage, he is shipwrecked on an island country where the inhabitants are all 6 inches or smaller, making him a giant. Most people are familiar with this part seeing pictures of Gulliver staked on a beach with little people running about. If you know anything about computer architecture, you may have heard of endianness. Storage of integers on some computers are Big Endian and other computer types use Little Endian. You can't just pass numbers between these computers without knowing this. Well the name was taken from this Part of the book, where the Lilliputians have been divided by which End of a soft-boiled egg should be cracked first, the Big End or the Little End. Very interesting! He spends almost three years on Lilliput.

Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag

His second voyage takes him to an island off of North America where all the people are 72 feet tall, making Gulliver the relative size he was in Part I, but now everyone else is a giant. Of course, everything is relatively larger so the adventure include problems with small rodents and insects., and just figuring out how to eat. Fun time is had. He spends almost 4 years here before escaping.

Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib and Japan

The third voyage he gets marooned on an island where everyone is the same size as him, but they have some weird thoughts on what a society should do. The satire of government comes through loud and clear here. The Grand Academy in Balnibarbi spend great resources and manpower  on researching preposterous schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons. There are many other fun escapades during his almost four year stay.

Part IV: A Voyage to the Land of the Houyhnhnms

The last voyage I found very interesting since the first people Gulliver meets are deformed savage humanoid creatures. Then he meets the inhabitants, a race of talking horses. They use the humanoids, known as Yahoos, for slave labor like we use horses in our world. Gulliver is recognized as a more intelligent Yahoo and learns the language of the Houyhnhnms. After almost 5 years here, he returns to England, but is unable to reconcile himself to living among "Yahoos" and becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables.

What an adventure. Again, if you have never read it, I highly recommend the read!

The Night Eternal by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

This is the third book in the Strain trilogy that I had started reading back in 2011. I never read the last book, which has been on my bookshelf,  until now and I give it a 3.0 (Great). A mini series was made a while back from the trilogy, it was called The Fall, which was also the title of the second book. Vampires take over the world...man is not happy!

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

I give this book a 2.5 (Good to Great). I originally got the book in a Book-of-the-month club I belonged to in the late 1980s. It was published in 1988. Only took me 33 years to finally read it. Strangely, it was both enjoyable and also made me feel uneasy, uncomfortable. The main character, Maggie Moran, is a lady we all know in our own lives but do not want to be like. You will have to read it yourself for more details.  I see that it won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, although it was not on my bucket list.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Another Hemingway, my third off the bucket list, but probably not my last. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953. I gave the book a 3.5 (great to Excellent). Most people know the story. A movie was made with Spencer Tracy playing Santiago, the Old Man. The sea played itself. This was the 42nd book on my bucket list.

All the books I just reviewed were read in 2021. Let's hope I can make 30 books in 2022, if not more...