The literary laziness continued until this Saturday, when I was compelled to search my library for something to read on my Metro ride to Taste of Georgetown. I needed something paperback (for ease of carrying in my bag all day) and preferred something I hadn’t yet read, which left me with two choices: The Secret Life of Lobsters or Shakespeare: the World as Stage, both of which I picked up on the 50% of table at Barnes and Noble back in June. Not really in the mood for a history of shellfish and shellfishermen, I opted for the Shakespeare.
The book was billed as a biography, but as the author, Bill Bryson, sets out plainly from the start and any English major already knows, there really isn’t much we know about Shakespeare. Instead, he paints an easy-to-read portrait of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater, and traces the history/legitimacy of many of the myths associated with Shakespeare (time spent in Italy, the multi-author conspiracy, etc.) The descriptions of 16th century London were lively and some of the descriptions of Shakespeare conspiracy-theorists over the last two hundred years were too. On the other hand, the book sometimes digressed into a list of names, dates and statistics that led me to skim whole paragraphs.
As a Shakespeare enthusiast, I definitely felt the book was worth the read. I haven’t read any of Bill Bryson’s other books, but based on his style, I’d definitely consider picking one up. He had a well-organized narrative structure to tie together his disparate facts, and I enjoyed the way he played with punctuation. My students and I call it "creative punctuation" - having fun with colons, semi-colons, parentheses and dashes. And speaking of creative punctuation, in case you were wondering, Shakespeare was a master of it. His works contain 138,198 commas, 26,794 colons, and 15,785 question marks. If you’re looking to indulge in your inner English major, the book is worth a look. If you haven’t picked up a copy of Hamlet since high school, this one’s definitely not for you!
Being one who promptly threw away her copy of Hamlet at the end of 11th grade, I probably would have chosen the book about shellfishermen. I was thinking just the other day while perusing the fish selection on the supermarket shelves about whether or not the fishermen actually get much of a profit from their catches once all is said and done for the day... perhaps after you finish the other book you can enlighten me.
ReplyDeleteMs H
Hamlet kinda sucks...too whiny! I like Macbeth though!
ReplyDeleteI think Linda Greenlaw also wrote a book about lobstering...but when I finish the lobster history book, I'll fill you in on the profits. BTW, I read somewhere once that back in the day when they used to keep prisoners on prison ships in England, they would feed them lobster all the time for dinner...because at the time no one else wanted to eat it! Not sure if it's true, but it kinda makes me smile to think about it.
Anyway...the literary laziness has returned...anyone have any good recommendations?