Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare 2020 Project

One of Shakespeare's most well-known and most oft performed plays. I find it interesting that Shakespeare's plays are categorized as Histories, Tragedies and Comedies, so his love stories fit into either tragedy or comedy - rather appropriate!

While this is a tragedy play, I found some comedic gems, such as the senior Capulet realizing more time has passed then he thought (as we all do after a certain age!)

Capulet: How long is 't now since last yourself and I

Were in a mask?

Capulets' Cousin: By'r Lady, thirty years.

Capulet: What, man, 'tis not so much

'Tis since the nuptials of Lucentio

...Some five and twenty years, and then we masked.

Capulets' Cousin: 'Tis more, 'tis more. His son is elder, sir.

His son is thirty.

Capulet: Will you tell me that?

His son was but a ward two years ago.

And how bout this knee-slapper:

Mercutio: Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.

Romeo reminded me of the sappy male characters in Nicholas Sparks' novels:

Romeo: See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

I think my favorite character was Friar Lawrence as he often said to love-sick, fickle Romeo exactly what I was thinking:

(When Romeo confesses is love for Juliet a mere 12 hours after pining away for his one true love Rosaline)
Friar Lawrence: Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here!

Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,

So soon forsaken? Young men's love, then, lies

Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.

Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine

Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!

How much salt water thrown away in waste,

To season love, that of it doth not taste!

And when Romeo is writhing on the ground lamenting his reduced sentence:
Romeo: There is no world without Verona walls,

But purgatory, torture, hell itself.

***

Friar Lawrence: O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness!

Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind Prince,

Taking thy part, hath rush'd aside the law,

And turn'd that black word death to banishment.

This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.

Romeo does grow up a little and has some poignant lines:

Romeo: O mischief, thou art swift

To enter in the the thoughts of desperate men!
***

Romeo: There is thy gold - worse poison to men's souls,...

Of course as we all know, things do not end well for the two young lovers:

Prince: For there never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare


Shakespeare 2020 Project

Shakespeare's first tragedy and what a blood fest it is! Revenge plays were the thing in the 16th Century, but Shakespeare being Shakespeare had to kick it up and make it a DUAL revenge play.

Per Roman custom, since 2 of Titus' sons died in war (he already lost 21 sons in the previous 10 years of war), Titus orders the sacrificial killing (by dismembering, disemboweling and tossing in a fire) of the eldest son of the captured Queen of the Goths (Tamora). SHE vows revenge!

When Titus learns that Tamora's 2 sons raped and disfigured his daughter Lavinia (cut out her tongue and cut off both her hands) HE vows revenge!

Though, it is the villainous Moor, Aaron who puts so much of the action in motion. Aaron was the one who convinced Demetrius and Chiron (Tamora's sons) to rape Lavinia when he hears them fighting over her.

"For shame, be friends, and join for that you jar...

That will not suffer you to square yourselves,

But to your wishes' height advance you both."

It was Aaron who tricked Titus' 2 sons to the pit where the Emperor's brother's (Bassianus) slain body was (slain by Demetrius and Chiron) and caused them to be blamed and sentenced to death.

It was Aaron who convinced Titus to chop off his hand in a falsely promised exchange for his sons' lives only to have the Emperor's messenger return with Titus' hand and the heads of his 2 sons.

When Aaron is captured and facing his own death:

Lucius: "Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?"

Aaron: "Ay, that I had not done a thousand more...

Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things

As willingly as one would kill a fly;

And nothing grieves me heartily indeed

But that I cannot do ten thousand more."

Speaking of flies...one of my laugh out loud moments in all this carnage is when Titus freaks out over his brother Marcus killing a fly:

Marcus: "Alas my lord, I have but kill'd a fly."

Titus: "But!' How if that fly had a father and mother?

How would he hang his slender gilded wings

And buzz lamenting doings in the air!

Poor harmless fly,

That with his pretty buzzing melody

Came here to make us merry! And thou hast kill'd him."

Though it is Titus who gets the ultimate revenge in the end! When Tamora and her sons disguise themselves in attempt to trick Titus (whom they believe has gone mad) into hosting a peace treaty dinner between his sole remaining son (Lucius) and the Emperor, Titus agrees and asks that Tamora's sons keep him company while she returns to get the Emperor.  He reveals to Demetrius and Chiron that he is not mad (um, that may be questionable) and that he knew who they were despite their disguises. He proceeds to slit their throats, grind their bones to dust, use their blood to make a paste for a pie crust and bake them into a pie!! At the dinner Tamora's husband the Emperor (Saturninus) asks Titus to bring the sons out to their mother:

Titus" Why, there they are, both baked in this pie,

Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,

Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred."

After which every stabs someone else and Lucius becomes the Emperor.

I found myself enjoying this play, kinda like a train wreck you just can't look away from. And it gave me a line I can't wait to use the next time someone interrupts my reading:

"Who doth molest my contemplation?"

    The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff
            Historical Fiction

Yes, another WWII book, but a little different. This one is based on a German circus that saved and helped many Jews during the war.  The author takes you into the life of the circus workers and shows you what hard workers they are and how the war affected them.

Noa is forced to leave her German home in disgrace and is taken in by the circus. There she meets Astrid, a Jewish trapeze artist, who begins to teach Noa how to fly on the trapeze. Both have secrets that help bond their friendship, but is that enough for them to save each other. 

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare 2020 Project

Taming has been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, possibly because I think it was one of the first ones I was introduced to.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding Taming; as to whether it is a misogynistic play, if Kate is tortured and suffers from Stockholm Syndrome or is it actually an ironic statement on marriage and challenging the expectation of women's roles of the time.

I personally feel that Shakespeare has more depth than what would be portrayed in just reading this as a play about creating a submissive woman. It seems to me that Petruchio and Kate are actually well-matched and this play is more about a complex love between these two strong-willed characters.

And of course I love the word play in Taming: inane, funny and bawdy!

P: Come, come you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.

K: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

P: My remedy is then to pluck it out.

K: Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.

P: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.

K: In his tongue.

P: Whose tongue?

K: Yours, if you talk of tales; and so farewell.

P: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.

Ooh, Will, you dirty-minded fellow!

The Taming has been seen in modern day productions including a fun production with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

As well as a 1999 adaptation in 10 Things I Hate About You.

Clover Blue by Eldonna Edwards

Once Upon a Book Club - May 2019
New Author

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I spent most of it waiting for something to happen (this may be because I read suspense/thrillers), and then just near the end something did happen and there were tears.

A coming-of-age story that has you question who makes up a family and what happens if good, loving people do bad things.

Summary from Goodreads: Set against the backdrop of a 1970s commune in Northern California, Clover Blue is a compelling, beautifully written story of a young boy's search for identity.

There are many things twelve-year-old Clover Blue isn't sure of: his exact date of birth, his name before he was adopted into the Saffron Freedom Community, or who his first parents were. What he does know with certainty is that among this close-knit, nature-loving group, he is happy. Here, everyone is family, regardless of their disparate backgrounds--surfer, midwife, Grateful Dead groupie, Vietnam deserter. But despite his loyalty to the commune and its guru-like founder Goji, Blue grapples with invisible ties toward another family--the one he doesn't remember. With the urging of his fearless and funny best friend, Harmony, Clover Blue begins to ask questions. The passing months bring upheaval to their little clan and another member arrives, a beautiful runaway teen named Rain, sparking new tensions. As secrets slowly unfurl, Blue's beliefs begin to shift. With each revelation about a heartbreaking past he never imagined, Blue faces a choice between those he's always trusted, and an uncertain future where he must risk everything in his quest for the truth.

Quotes: "She doesn't try to pick the lock when you close a door. But that doesn't mean she won't knock every once in awhile."

"Don't let concern for someone else's actions become your prison."

"Like you need saving. You've never needed saving. I just needed to be sure you were okay."

Black Out by Lisa Unger

"U" Author

Well, I think I was left with more questions than answers with this one. This a complex plot with varying time frames of immediate past, present and memories of a more distant and disturbing past. A story where everyone is suspect, nothing and no one is as it/they seem. It was a fast paced thriller, but I was left with an ending that I questioned. Possibly a re-read could resolve some of the uncertainty, but with the size of my Toppling Bookpile, I don't have time for the re-read, so I will just let this one go.

Summary from Goodreads: On the surface, Annie Powers's life in a wealthy Florida beach neighborhood is happy and idyllic. Her husband, Gray, loves her fiercely; together, they dote on their beautiful young daughter, Victory. But the bubble surrounding Annie is pricked when she senses that the demons of her past have resurfaced and, to her horror, are now creeping up on her. These are demons she can't fully recall because of a highly disassociative state that allowed her to forget. Disturbing events trigger strange and confusing memories for Annie, who realizes she has to quickly piece them together before her past comes to claim her future . . . and her daughter.

Quotes:"Most of us don't live in the present tense. We dwell in a mental place where our regrets and grudges from our past compete with our fears about the future."

"These days, though, everyone thought they were living in a realty television show. People seemed to have trouble differentiating between what was really happening and what was happening on television."

"He has always done only what he was able to do. Maybe that's true of all of us. Maybe it's just that when it's your parents, their shortfalls are so much more heartbreaking."

"'Everybody stumbles. It's what you do then that makes or breaks your life. It's what you do after you fall that's the measure of who you are.'"

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare 2020 Project

Believed to be one of WS's first plays, The Comedy of Errors is a take on an earlier (BC Era) Roman comedic play, Menaechmi, but in true WS fashion - kicked up a notch by adding another set of twins to the craziness!

Short summary - Father and 1 of his twin sons and 1 of the twin servants to his sons (of the same age) are separated at sea from Mother and the other sets of twins.  30 years later they all are in the same town unbeknownst to one another and all kinds of mistaken identity occurs to the tune of high hilarity.

The smacking of pates (which happens quite often) is of Stooges variety slapstick.

And the puns and wordplay are numerous and sometimes lost in the word meanings that have changed over time; to catch them all one would need to embark on a deeper study of the play itself and Shakespeare (and many scholars have done so!)

I thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth between Atipholus and Dromio (Syracusians) in regards to the loss of time/loss of hair:

"Dromio: Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.

***

Dromio: There's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.

Antipholus: May he not do it by fine and recovery?

Dromio: Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the lost hair of another man.

***

Dromio:...The one [reason], to save the money he spends in trimming; the other, that at dinner they [hair] should not drop in his porridge.

***

Dromio:...Time himself is bald and therefore to the world's end will have bald followers.

Antipholus: I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion."

And poor Dromio of Syracuse who discovers Dromio of Ephesus' wife, Nell (a rather large woman):

"No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her."

when she mistakes him for her husband. And Dromio (S) is beside himself:

"She's the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light, I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world."

While the play lacks some of the depth of WS's later works, (though there is commentary to be found on marriage and social class structure) it is one of his most farcical, and like most of his works, stands the test of time.  The film Big Business (1988) was adapted from The Comedy of Errors.

  The GIRL who Chased the Moon - Sarah A. Allen

2020 Keyword Challenge - February - Girl
               
This was a nice light read.   Little magic, little romance, little mystery.

Emily, a 17 yr old, is sent to her grandfather to live with after the death of her mother.  She never knew she had a grandfather because Emily's mother never talked about her past.   So living in her mother's hometown, Emily discovers many of not only her mother's secrets but also the town's secrets.

We meet many of the town's interesting characters like Emily's grandfather, an 8 ft giant,  Julia who bakes cakes to entice hope and love, and the Coffey's who have a decade old secret.

#MonthlyKeyWordGXO

Goodreads says:

Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. Such as, why did Dulcie Shelby leave her hometown so suddenly? And why did she vow never to return? But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew--a reclusive, real-life gentle giant--she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor bakes hope in the form of cakes.

Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

   The Starless Sea  - Erin Morgenstern
                 Guilty Pleasure

After being totally in love with Night Circus,  I was very excited to dive into The Starless Sea. I started out liking it, then I didn't, then I did, and ended up being disappointed.

There were beautifully written little stories woven throughout a confusing and seemingly plot-less story.  I loved some of the literary references and the magical feel of the book.  But overall, it just did not flow for me and I found myself lost on the Starless Sea many times.

Goodreads: 
Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in plain sight. But those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is searching for his door, though he does not know it. He follows a silent siren song, an inexplicable knowledge that he is meant for another place. When he discovers a mysterious book in the stacks of his campus library he begins to read, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities, and nameless acolytes. Suddenly a turn of the page brings Zachary to a story from his own childhood impossibly written in this book that is older than he is.

The Girl They Left Behind by Roxanne Veletzos

2020 Key Word Challenge - February (Girl, Any, Love, Red, Note Throne)
Once Upon a Book Club - January 2019
Historical Fiction

I knew little about the horrors of life in Romania AFTER the end of WWII as the country was under Soviet occupation and a Communist regime. The Allies celebrated the end of the war and many (Americans mainly) went back to their pre-war lives not realizing that some lives were forever changed. The citizens of Romania certainly had little to celebrate with the Nazis moving out only to be replaced by the Soviet Red Army.

This book was riveting in its depiction of Natalia's family and life in Romania. Based on a true story, that of the author's mother's life. I am continually amazed by the strength and endurance of the human spirit.

Summary from Goodreads: On a freezing night in January 1941, a little Jewish girl is found on the steps of an apartment building in Bucharest. With Romania recently allied with the Nazis, the Jewish population is in grave danger, undergoing increasingly violent persecution. The girl is placed in an orphanage and eventually adopted by a wealthy childless couple who name her Natalia. As she assimilates into her new life, she all but forgets the parents who were forced to leave her behind. They are even further from her mind when Romania falls under Soviet occupation.

#MonthlyKeyWordGXO

Henry VI, Part 3 by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare 2020 Project

Part 3 showcases the final battles of the War of the Roses: Red representing Lancaster and White representing York. It was tough keeping everything straight: who was king (Henry then Edward then Henry oh wait now Edward), who was on which side (wishy Warwick, conniving Clarence) and who was dead! Though admittedly there were less deaths and beheadings than in Part 2 (18), but 11 is still a mighty number of stabbings and some guys were stabbed multiple times by multiple people just for good measure!

I have a soft spot in my heart for Henry, who just wanted to live a peaceful life, yet wars were being fought all around him and for him. His queen, Margaret, was ruthless and at times heartless (except when lamenting her son's death when she truly lost her heart), but never underestimate her:

Richard: "A woman's general; what should we fear?"

Oh only an army of 30,000 men and her kicking your butt!

I struggled more with "Wind-changing Warwick" who changes sides on a whim and who in battle: "I lay me down a little while to breathe;" yet when called out on his lack of courage: "I'll kill my horse, because I will not fly...I'll never pause again, never stand still..." yeah, right!

And Richard, ooh, pure evil Richard! "Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile." He has much more in store in the plays to come: "Counting myself but bad till I be best."

Even though I wrangled with Warwick, he had some of my favorite lines:

"...live we how we can, yet die we must."

AND

"I had rather chop this hand off at a blow,

and with the other fling it at thy face,"