Well, I’ve got a bit of a surprise in here. I wrote that I was reading The Fellowship of The Ring again and that’s true, but I was also reading Shakespeare: The World as a Stage as well. So my surprise fourth book of 2008 is the aforementioned book.
To begin, I’m not a big fan of Bill Bryson and that said I’m not someone who hates Bill Bryson. So that having been said, I really liked this book. I’m a big fan of Shakespeare anyway, especially the films directed by Kenneth Branagh. Hamlet is truly awesome! Bryson’s tone is very breezy and he steers clear of speculation, although he does mention some speculation made by historians. He sticks to what we do know about the Bard and that is surprisingly little! Even though he hasn’t much to say, Bryson says it in a very readable style. The book flew by.
Score: 68/100
Book I am Reading Now: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: book, bryson, challenge, read, reading, shakespeare
If somebody wrote a book about all we *know* of Shakespeare, for a fact, it would indeed be very small – he was born in Stratford, married Anne Hathaway, had some kids, was engaged in a variety of legal disputes, and died. That’s really about all we can prove.
What Bryson does, which is all the more fun, is to start with everything that’s claimed about Shakespeare, and then say why it’s not true. I think my favorite line came during the discussion of the Authorship question, where he counters this argument: “There’s no evidence that Shakespeare owned any books, therefore he couldn’t have written the plays!” with this: “Then he must not have owned any pants, because we have no evidence of that, either!”
As a Shakespeare geek I enjoyed Bryson’s book greatly, and have been passing it around my friends to share the experience.