Much Ado About Nothing (by William Shakespeare)

The Read Harder Challenge is put on by Book Riot, and one of their categories this year is to read a book from their podcast, Zero to Well Read.  I've read quite a lot of them so I decided to read a play that I've of course seen adapted, but never read, Much Ado About Nothing.

(I learned that Nothing is a triple? quadruple? pun - in Elizabethan times it was pronounced "noting" so there are a lot of puns about noting things and musical notes, and it's also a reference to a woman's genitals since she has... "no thing." Oh, Shakesy, what a rascal you are.) 

I feel the comedies especially work better as performed. I kept pausing to go watch some of the Branagh adaptation or to look up what the hell Dogberry is talking about so I didn't miss any jokes. And as usual, I hate Claudio in this and love Beatrice and Benedick.  I mean what is there to say about Shakespeare? It's a classic comedy and reading it is never a waste of time. 

I think this also puts me officially as halfway through this year's challenge, a bit ahead of schedule.  

A Raisin in the Sun (by Lorraine Hansberry)

Read for the RHC category "a classic written by a POC."  I've read so many of the greats, especially by Black American authors: Beloved, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Invisible Man, Their Eyes Were Watching God, etc. But I'd never read A Raisin in the Sun.  (Title from a poem by another of the greats, Langston Hughes.) 

I wasn't familiar with Lorraine Hansberry either, or even that this classic play was written by a young (she was 29 when she wrote it) woman.  It's marvelous, of course, and still so relevant.  It's about a family living in Chicago who comes into some money and considers using it to better their lives. Of course, this isn't without complications.  (Next paragraph will have some spoilers.)

The introduction in the edition I read talked about how easy it is to misread the play, looking at this family as a universal American family and the ending as "oh yay, they move into their new house!"  In fact, race is crucial to understanding these characters, and the ending has echoes in Hansberry's life: her house was firebombed by a white mob and her family had to leave Chicago.

I'm so glad I decided to read this play; it's wonderful.

Yellow Face (by David Henry Hwang)

One of the Read Harder Challenges this year was to read a play by an author of color, so I chose Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang.

It's a comic, metatextual play about, among other things, the casting of Jonathan Pryce as an Asian man in a production of Miss Saigon, and it mixes real-life incidents and characters with fictional ones. I would love to see this performed, but reading it was hugely enjoyable as well.

Hwang also wrote M. Butterfly, which sticks in my head because of the movie version. I watched it when I was in high school so god knows how I oversimplified it, but I would love to experience more of Hwang's work.

Vacation Reads: Truckee Edition

Spent the long weekend in the snow, giving me lots of time to read books! I'm about halfway through a giant one, but in the meantime, I finished some others:

Looker (by Laura Sims)

Absolutely loved it. This was marketed as a Gone Girl-style thriller but it’s not that. Instead, it’s a character study about a woman sinking into obsession with her actress neighbor. The protagonist is an unreliable narrator (my favorite, always) who reminded me of none other than Charles Kinbote, King of Zembla. The author isn't afraid to go dark and I loved the ending. Top book of the year so far!

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (by Chen Chen)

Such a great poetry collection, read for the Read Harder Challenge, by a gay Chinese man who writes about his identity, among other things. Here's a snippet I highlighted:

I’m envious of the clouds who can from time to time fall completely apart
& everyone just says, It's raining,
& someone might even bring cats & dogs into it,

no one says, Stop being so dramatic or You should see
a professional. 

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (by J.K. Rowling) 

I'm not into watching Johnny Depp do his weird Grindelwald thing, so I read the screenplay instead. Obviously a fast read, ended on a cliffhanger. The "fantastic beasts" part feels like such an afterthought to the overarching plot. Mostly I wish these were novels instead of movies and screenplays! 

Maid (by Stephanie Land) 

A compelling memoir about a single mother in poverty, albeit problematic in terms of white privilege. (She barely acknowledges it.)  Overall I feel like I would like a memoir of poverty from a woman of color, but given the world of blogs, it would be much harder for this hypothetical other woman to start a blog, and land a book deal. At any rate, Land's observations about the cycle of poverty and abuse make this worth a read regardless.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (by Jack Thorne)

Quite convenient that the Read Harder Challenge includes "a play" in the same year that the new Harry Potter play comes out, hmm?

I have no idea how the Harry Potter fandom feels about this play. (Actually I do have one idea: I guarantee they are 'shipping Albus and Scorpius hardcore -- that relationship is pure romance.)  But I enjoyed it! After a bit of a blip at the beginning with the use of some ableist language that bothered me. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It actually fixes a lot of the things that bugged me about the series -- Ron and Hermione's marriage is shown as bringing out the best in each of them, which I was not convinced of fully by the novels. The trope of "all Slytherins are evil" is finally subverted. The Albus/Scorpius friendship is what I wanted from Draco/Harry, so I loved it. Snape's motivations are fleshed out in a way that makes more sense to me.

Other good stuff: Scorpius is a wonderful character. There is some nicely progressive gender stuff: Hermione has massive career success, Ron is a stay-at-home-dad, and Harry does all the cooking.  And Hermione is black (at least the stage version of Hermione is played by a black actress) which I effing love. And I enjoyed the story (a clever time-travel story) even if it didn't feel quite in line with how time travel worked in the past. It was just so satisfying to be back in that world. The twists were good and very Rowlingesque.

I'm not sure about the retcon of the whole Bellatrix thing, and of course I would much rather have read this in insanely detailed novel form. I also wish we had gotten a glimpse of Fred, too. #NotOverIt. But other than that, it's pure joy to be at Hogwarts again!

Macbeth (by William Shakespeare)

Yes, this was my first time reading Macbeth in its entirety. I know. I know.

This was an interesting experience, since it was a bunch of stuff I wasn't familiar with interpersed with stuff I know very well. Certain famous lines are of course familiar to me. I let students memorize the Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech for extra credit, and of course have it memorized myself.  I teach it, I know what it expresses, and yet I didn't know the couplet that precedes it at all. 

I also know "out, damned spot" and "by the pricking of my thumbs" and the other famous lines, but somehow completely missed Lady Macbeth's soliloquy. Which meant I got to experience it for the first time. Chills, goosebumps, the works. And I've been reading and re-reading and re-re-reading it. So awesome you guys! (And there's also that bit about pulling her nipple out of a baby's mouth and bashing its brains in. Way harsh, Tai.)

I also wasn't exactly familiar with the plot, so I found it almost amusing how quickly it gets murdery. Macbeth talks to the weird sisters for two minutes and then is like, well damn, better go on a murder spree starting right the hell now! Let's get a-murdering! Not exactly a slow build on the motive there, Shakespeare.

Trivia: I was waiting for "Lead on, Macduff!" the whole time, but it turns out it's "Lay on, Macduff."  Like "once more unto the breach," I guess it's commonly misquoted. I also enjoyed reading a bit about the play afterwards. The prophecy about Banquo's descendants on the throne comes across as a dangling plotline, but I learned that King James I, who was Shakespeare's patron at the time, was a descendant of the historical Banquo. This is why Banquo is portrayed as a hero, and possibly why there's a mirror included in the line of spirit kings -- so James could see his own face from his place in the audience.

So the Shakespeare plays I have read: Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Henry V, King Lear, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Twelfth Night, and now Macbeth. Plays I've seen performed but have not read: Love's Labour's Lost and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Plays I've seen the film version of but have not read: Much Ado About Nothing (both versions) and Taming of the Shrew, if 10 Things I Hate About You counts. Film version I own, and love: the musical Kenneth Branagh version of Love's Labour's Lost. Play I am familiar with insofar as it applies to Pale Fire, but have not read: Timon of Athens. Play I'd like to read next: probably Henry IV or The Winter's Tale, unless you have any better suggestions!