I have Chris at Chrisbookarama to thank for this link, I've linked you to her original post. Joss Whedon has remade Much Ado About Nothing!!!!! Nathan Filion stars! Alexis Denisof!!! Amy Acker! Reed Diamond! Here is the official theatre trailer link, over at Huffington Post. If I were tech savvy I could post the trailer here, but sadly my skills don't extend that far. It looks amazing. Whedon and Shakespeare! OMG! And it's in Shakespeare's language!!! I'm so excited I could jump up and down if I weren't being careful from my operation!!!
Awesome. Completely awesome.
My sister has taken my kids for the whole day and night, so my husband and I have an unexpected date night, which is as rare as maybe once a year. I'm not sure what we are doing yet. Definitely Indian curry at a restaurant for dinner, which we had at our first dinner out after we reconciled, last November, thanks to my eldest son. That was our first meal out alone together in a couple of years. We are almost talking blue moon here....so whether we go out to a movie too, or rent a whole bunch of movies we haven't seen yet (Argo tops this list for me), and stay in and enjoy having an entire evening to ourselves, I'm not sure yet. I do know that Whedon/Shakespeare on top of having a whole 24 hours alone with my sweetie, is like pure happiness. It could only be made better if I ran into a publisher who wants to see the short story I've been working on!
Enjoy your Saturday. We even have a rare day where it's sunny, brilliant sunshine all day, so I'm heading out to enjoy the sunshine, too. I hope wherever you are, you are having a lovely Saturday too, Gentle Reader.
Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 March 2013
Thursday, 26 July 2012
non-fiction buying frenzy
Ana made my day today. I have been catching up with all of you lovely bloggers, and I found her post here on upcoming non-fiction books she is excited about. She asked us if there were any upcoming releases we were excited about. I decided that I would change the question to, "what books have you been buying that are unusual for you? " Because, dear Readers, tumbling into this house faster than I can read them, are an enormous amount of biographies and histories. Ok, it won't be an enormous amount for many of you! but for me, it's not usual for me to read or even look at biographies more than once a year. Here is what has come in over the past few months:
All Roads lead to Austen - Amy Elizabeth Smith. She goes to Latin America for a year, taking her Jane Austen novels, and leading book clubs in different countries, to see if Jane Austen transfers into other cultures, and what their versions of Jane Austen (or recommended books) are. It looks very interesting and very fun. I love the idea of talking about and reading Jane Austen in different countries, and to see how she does cross cultures. Plus it's about books and reading books, specifically Jane Austen, and a chance to learn about some of the best writers in Latin America from people who read. It's like being part of book club on the road with her!
The Civil War of 1812 - Alan Taylor. It is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, the war that defined Canada as a land that was not going to be part of the US. This book looks at the war from both sides of the border, and what it meant really - because even back then, families and towns straddled the border, and brothers and cousins fought for one side or the other, depending who they wanted to belong to. This history looks at the war from the lives of the people who fought it, the soldiers, immigrants, settlers and Indians on both sides of the border. It looks fascinating.
God's Mercies - Douglas Hunter. The story of the rivalry between Samuel de Champlain and Henry Hudson (for whom Hudson's Bay is named, as well as the Bay, one of Canada's largest and oldest household good and fashion store). They both raced to explore and map the northern half of North America, and find the route to the Far East, in the 17th century, and were to two principal explorers from the St Lawrence River up to Hudson's Bay. Samuel Champlain came by the Ottawa River, and his sextant was found in a field further up the Ottawa Valley. A statue to him is on a cliff beside the National Gallery of Art here in Ottawa, across the Rideau Canal from Parliament Hill. Here is a link to a little historical view of these two. One was French (Samuel de Champlain), one was English (Henry Hudson). The Hudson River in New York is named for him. Hudson died ingloriously after his crew mutinied while he tried to find the Northwest Passage, while Champlain had success after success in mapping the land through to Georgian Bay. This book won one of Canada's Non-fiction prizes in 2007, the Nereus Writer's Trust. As a companion to this I still need to pick up Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer.
A Train in Winter - Caroline Moorhead. About the friendship between a group of 230 French women resistance fighters who were rounded up from Gestapo detention camps and sent to Auschwitz. The only train to take women of the resistance to a death camp. This book explores who they were, why they joined the Resistance, how they were captured and their life in the death camps. 49 women came back. Six of them were still alive in 2010, and were able to share their stories for this book.
The Occupied Garden - Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski. A couple live in Holland when the Nazis march in. Years later they move to Canada, and after their deaths, their granddaughters begin to piece together what happened during the war to their grandparents. They had never spoken of what happened to them in Holland, while alive. A family memoir that is about life in wartime Holland, something that surprisingly there isn't alot of, in English. My stepfather grew up in Holland during the war, so I've heard a few stories from him also, but it's not something people talk about often.
The Years of the Sword: Wellington - Elizabeth Longford. I blame the .99 price tag, and that it has illustrations. Some day I will read this biography of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo.
The Hare with the Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal. A family memoir of a man who explores his family history while uncovering the history of 264 netsukes, Japanese wood carvings that he inherits. Who handled them? Where did they come from, what was their history? Along the way he discovers that his family were once a banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna in the 19th century, yet by the end of WW 2, all that remained of this dynasty were these netsukes. This was an award winner when it came out, winning the Costa Book Award for Biography, among others.
The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy - William Gaunt. 1.99 price, long out of print, about the Pre-Raphaelites' lives - especially their daily lives, with anecdotes more than any long narrative - biographical studies this kind of biography is called. It looks interesting and a good find for my growing Pre-Raphaelite library. They are among my favourite artists.
Graven with Diamonds - Nicola Shulman. The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt, Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy. He is the author of one of my favourite poems, "Whoso List to Hunt, I know Where There is a Hind'. There are not many biographies out on him. This is was just published recently, and won the 2011 Best Non-Fiction of 2011 Writer's Guild Award. I'm fascinated with the Tudor times, and the enormous changes that occurred then, and what life was like at the courts for Wyatt, who was both a courtier and a poet. Poetry was held in much higher esteem than it currently is, and the best poets could be ironic, witty, and sarcastic, under the guise of poetry. He avoided being beheaded even though he was thought to have had an affair with Anne Boleyn. Here is a link to some of his poems online.
John Donne: The Reformed Soul - John Stubbs. Published in 2006, now considered one of the best biographies on Donne. I am fascinated with his life and how it informed his poetry. No one could use words and twist them like he could, making one meaning from just the way the words are placed, from what you think they will be. He struggled with his faith at a time when it was dangerous to have faith, in the Reformation.
Mistress of the Monarchy- Alison Weir - about Katherine Swynford, the mistress of John of Gaunt, later to become his wife. He was the Duke of Lancaster. This was in medieval England, in the 14th century. I want to read about how a woman went from being a mistress to the wife of a Duke, and how she survived court in a time when women were mostly used as property. It looks very interesting. She wss intelligent and considered one of the beauties of medieval England.
Shakespeare's Wife - Germaine Greer. Other than her name, not much is known about Ann Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare. This is the first major biography of Shakespeare's wife, the woman who bore his children and lived far from the London scene. Who was she? How did she feel as Shakespeare gained so much acclaim, and she was never by his side?
Elizabeth's London - Everyday Life in Elizabethan England - Liza Picard. This is part of a series of books Liza Picard has written, about daily life in London through the centuries. This was published in 2003, so fairly new, and covers all the things you wanted to know about Elizabethan England: from House Moving, to Garden Design, to The Bills of Mortality, to The Markets, Cooking and Recipes, Sex Outside Marriage, The lottery, Education, Interiors and Furniture, Clothes and Beauty, Law. These are chapter headings, and there are many more fun ones! Just everything you would want to know about life in Elizabeth England. I have Restoration London and Dr Johnson's London in this series. Victorian London rounds out the titles. So if you are looking for a good history of daily life in London in different centuries, this is an excellent series to start with.
and lastly, bought today, just out in sofcover:
Effie - Suzanne Fagence Cooper. About the live of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite painter. She married John Ruskin first, who on their wedding night turned away from her saying she didn't inspire desire in him. When Millais was hired to paint Ruskin's portrait several years later, Millais and Effie fell in love. She dared to leave Ruskin, and go to live with Millais. This makes it sound boring when it really looks very interesting and intriguing, a love triangle that involves one of England's greatest art critics and one of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. And the woman who caused Victorian England's most scandalous love triangle. Passion, art, and real life - this is irresistible.
Now the challenge is to find time to read them all! 13 books, one per month, I could feel a challenge coming on.
So, how about you? Have you been buying any unusual for you books lately? Is any non-fiction suddenly drawing your interest?
All Roads lead to Austen - Amy Elizabeth Smith. She goes to Latin America for a year, taking her Jane Austen novels, and leading book clubs in different countries, to see if Jane Austen transfers into other cultures, and what their versions of Jane Austen (or recommended books) are. It looks very interesting and very fun. I love the idea of talking about and reading Jane Austen in different countries, and to see how she does cross cultures. Plus it's about books and reading books, specifically Jane Austen, and a chance to learn about some of the best writers in Latin America from people who read. It's like being part of book club on the road with her!
The Civil War of 1812 - Alan Taylor. It is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, the war that defined Canada as a land that was not going to be part of the US. This book looks at the war from both sides of the border, and what it meant really - because even back then, families and towns straddled the border, and brothers and cousins fought for one side or the other, depending who they wanted to belong to. This history looks at the war from the lives of the people who fought it, the soldiers, immigrants, settlers and Indians on both sides of the border. It looks fascinating.
God's Mercies - Douglas Hunter. The story of the rivalry between Samuel de Champlain and Henry Hudson (for whom Hudson's Bay is named, as well as the Bay, one of Canada's largest and oldest household good and fashion store). They both raced to explore and map the northern half of North America, and find the route to the Far East, in the 17th century, and were to two principal explorers from the St Lawrence River up to Hudson's Bay. Samuel Champlain came by the Ottawa River, and his sextant was found in a field further up the Ottawa Valley. A statue to him is on a cliff beside the National Gallery of Art here in Ottawa, across the Rideau Canal from Parliament Hill. Here is a link to a little historical view of these two. One was French (Samuel de Champlain), one was English (Henry Hudson). The Hudson River in New York is named for him. Hudson died ingloriously after his crew mutinied while he tried to find the Northwest Passage, while Champlain had success after success in mapping the land through to Georgian Bay. This book won one of Canada's Non-fiction prizes in 2007, the Nereus Writer's Trust. As a companion to this I still need to pick up Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer.
A Train in Winter - Caroline Moorhead. About the friendship between a group of 230 French women resistance fighters who were rounded up from Gestapo detention camps and sent to Auschwitz. The only train to take women of the resistance to a death camp. This book explores who they were, why they joined the Resistance, how they were captured and their life in the death camps. 49 women came back. Six of them were still alive in 2010, and were able to share their stories for this book.
The Occupied Garden - Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski. A couple live in Holland when the Nazis march in. Years later they move to Canada, and after their deaths, their granddaughters begin to piece together what happened during the war to their grandparents. They had never spoken of what happened to them in Holland, while alive. A family memoir that is about life in wartime Holland, something that surprisingly there isn't alot of, in English. My stepfather grew up in Holland during the war, so I've heard a few stories from him also, but it's not something people talk about often.
The Years of the Sword: Wellington - Elizabeth Longford. I blame the .99 price tag, and that it has illustrations. Some day I will read this biography of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo.
The Hare with the Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal. A family memoir of a man who explores his family history while uncovering the history of 264 netsukes, Japanese wood carvings that he inherits. Who handled them? Where did they come from, what was their history? Along the way he discovers that his family were once a banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna in the 19th century, yet by the end of WW 2, all that remained of this dynasty were these netsukes. This was an award winner when it came out, winning the Costa Book Award for Biography, among others.
The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy - William Gaunt. 1.99 price, long out of print, about the Pre-Raphaelites' lives - especially their daily lives, with anecdotes more than any long narrative - biographical studies this kind of biography is called. It looks interesting and a good find for my growing Pre-Raphaelite library. They are among my favourite artists.
Graven with Diamonds - Nicola Shulman. The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt, Courtier, Poet, Assassin, Spy. He is the author of one of my favourite poems, "Whoso List to Hunt, I know Where There is a Hind'. There are not many biographies out on him. This is was just published recently, and won the 2011 Best Non-Fiction of 2011 Writer's Guild Award. I'm fascinated with the Tudor times, and the enormous changes that occurred then, and what life was like at the courts for Wyatt, who was both a courtier and a poet. Poetry was held in much higher esteem than it currently is, and the best poets could be ironic, witty, and sarcastic, under the guise of poetry. He avoided being beheaded even though he was thought to have had an affair with Anne Boleyn. Here is a link to some of his poems online.
John Donne: The Reformed Soul - John Stubbs. Published in 2006, now considered one of the best biographies on Donne. I am fascinated with his life and how it informed his poetry. No one could use words and twist them like he could, making one meaning from just the way the words are placed, from what you think they will be. He struggled with his faith at a time when it was dangerous to have faith, in the Reformation.
Mistress of the Monarchy- Alison Weir - about Katherine Swynford, the mistress of John of Gaunt, later to become his wife. He was the Duke of Lancaster. This was in medieval England, in the 14th century. I want to read about how a woman went from being a mistress to the wife of a Duke, and how she survived court in a time when women were mostly used as property. It looks very interesting. She wss intelligent and considered one of the beauties of medieval England.
Shakespeare's Wife - Germaine Greer. Other than her name, not much is known about Ann Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare. This is the first major biography of Shakespeare's wife, the woman who bore his children and lived far from the London scene. Who was she? How did she feel as Shakespeare gained so much acclaim, and she was never by his side?
Elizabeth's London - Everyday Life in Elizabethan England - Liza Picard. This is part of a series of books Liza Picard has written, about daily life in London through the centuries. This was published in 2003, so fairly new, and covers all the things you wanted to know about Elizabethan England: from House Moving, to Garden Design, to The Bills of Mortality, to The Markets, Cooking and Recipes, Sex Outside Marriage, The lottery, Education, Interiors and Furniture, Clothes and Beauty, Law. These are chapter headings, and there are many more fun ones! Just everything you would want to know about life in Elizabeth England. I have Restoration London and Dr Johnson's London in this series. Victorian London rounds out the titles. So if you are looking for a good history of daily life in London in different centuries, this is an excellent series to start with.
and lastly, bought today, just out in sofcover:
Effie - Suzanne Fagence Cooper. About the live of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite painter. She married John Ruskin first, who on their wedding night turned away from her saying she didn't inspire desire in him. When Millais was hired to paint Ruskin's portrait several years later, Millais and Effie fell in love. She dared to leave Ruskin, and go to live with Millais. This makes it sound boring when it really looks very interesting and intriguing, a love triangle that involves one of England's greatest art critics and one of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. And the woman who caused Victorian England's most scandalous love triangle. Passion, art, and real life - this is irresistible.
Now the challenge is to find time to read them all! 13 books, one per month, I could feel a challenge coming on.
So, how about you? Have you been buying any unusual for you books lately? Is any non-fiction suddenly drawing your interest?
Friday, 20 June 2008
Finished! OUT2 and A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hurray! OUT2 is completed!!! I finished A Midsummer's Night Dream just before midnight. Yes, it is now after midnight! I did it, my very first challenge completed! This is such a relief - I do sign up for the challenges intending to read all the books, and I want to read them all! So to finish a challenge means something to me.
It was a fun one too. I enjoyed so much reading fantasy, fantasy, and more fantasy. And not just any fantasy, but fairy tales and novels about fairies, magic, about the quest of the heroic self in literature and myth, and finally ending on sweet William Shakespeare. This is a wonderful challenge and I fully intend to do it again next year.
So, two reviews and I've reviewed everything in the challenge:
The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I have put off reviewing this book because I don't have the words to describe how powerful it is to read. My copy (which is from 1954 and now falling apart) is bookmarked all the way through. I found so much that was rich with ideas about the myth of the heroic journey that was interesting and powerful. Campbell has taken a great many of the world's religions and myths from different cultures and analyzed them for the source and description of the heroic journey. He has mined fairy tales, folklore, primitive ( how I hate this word! 'first peoples', maybe?) people's myths - Native Indians, polynesians, Australian aborigines, Norse, Celtic, Indian, African, Chinese, Japanese. It is really an amazing book. And out of all these stories of transformation, because that is what is at the heart of the heroic quest (Campbell says), he has found the cycle of the heroic quest. The Call to Adventure begins the journey, Initiation is undergone, then the return to the world. The book takes this basic journey and divides the images it examines into two great cycles into which all fairy tales,myths, folktales and world religions - which he examines for the stories, the heroic quests embedded within the religions, not as a debate or question of the authenticity of the religion itself - but why we respond to it - into two main cycles, the monomyth cycle, which is the society the individual comes from and brings back the key of transformation back to, and the cosmogonic cycle, which the universal story of creation that world religions are created from. Many of the great stories of how the world was created are examined in this section, and it is fascinating to see how different some are to my western perspective, and how similar others are.
This is a fascinating compendium of myths. There are illustrations, poems, dotting the pages, so we have a visual context. It is not a dry book by any means: "But if we are to grasp the full value of the materials, we must note that myths are not exactly comparable to dream. Their figures originate from the same sources - the unconscious wells of fantasy......And their understood function is to serve as a powerful picture language for the communication of traditional wisdom." Or: "The helpful crone and fairy godmother is a familiar feature of European fairy lore.....What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny."
This book has so full of myth and symbol that it will take several readings to absorb it all fully. It has helped me to understand myths and the role they play and why we need them, better. And that is the crux of this book: we need myths. We need fairy tales. this book explains why, what we get from them, and the dangers for a society when their myths lose meaning, as he says that our western society has been in for most of the 20th century. I think it explains why we need fantasy books and images now; some of our old myths that were cultural no longer resonate the same way because of cultural changes since the Industrial revolution, so we have to go back to the heroic quest and invent - if we can, or reclaim - myths and stories that come from deep in our souls. We need those stories to be told, or we die as a society.
I think this explains why the best fantasy is popular the world over, and why my fairy tales post (where i asked what everyones favorite fairy tale was) remains the most popular post (or the one with the most answers) so far: fairy tales live inside us, and they resonate long after we think we leave such things behind. Because, of course, we never do. The Hero With a Thousand Faces takes a look at why. I think it is a fascinating book, and i highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand what makes fairy tales and myths work, and why we need them. So when someone scoffs at a dinner party, "why do you read fantasy?" our inner fantasy bookworm can reply coolly: "Tell me your dreams and I'll tell you where you are on your life's journey." At least after reading this book, you will have a good guess at where they fall on their heroic journey!
Now for A Midsummer's Night Dream. I had forgotten I'd read this for university until I began reading it. It suddenly flooded back to me, though I can't remember anything that we discussed back then, I recalled the story. It was a change to read this and not have to worry about taking notes, thinking about papers to discuss on Shakespeare's use of alliteration, verse, or the various couples, etc! It was so enjoyable to just read the play and let my imagination show me the forest scenes,which are so fun. Here is a quote that has some folklore in it (for the challenge):
Act 2, Scene 1:
line 33: Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
MIslead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck."
This is the play that is the source of the immortal line : "The course of true love never did run smooth"(Act 1, scene 1, line 134)
Shakespeare also equates the fight between Tatiana and Oberon (the King and Queen of the fairy court) as the reason the spring has become wet and rainy and is ruining the crops: this links the fairy world with nature, with the countryside, and with the weather. Fairies are part of the world that we don't control, but which we are at the mercy at, and this play shows how easily people succumb to fairies: a little flower dust from certain plants is dusted on eyes, and suddenly characters are falling in love madly when they hated each other before! And the Queen of Fairies loves a man who is playing a donkey and becomes half a real one.....there is alot of sly humour in this play, digs at marriage, fidelity, the court, the law, and of course, true love. All the way through it, though there is Duke in the human world, it is the King and Queen of the fairies who have the real power, and the wisdom to recognize love that the Duke at first does not see.
Fun, and magical, and just the right way to end this challenge on the summer solstice. Happy longest day of the year, everyone! May a little good magic come into your life!
And, thank you, Carl for hosting this challenge.
It was a fun one too. I enjoyed so much reading fantasy, fantasy, and more fantasy. And not just any fantasy, but fairy tales and novels about fairies, magic, about the quest of the heroic self in literature and myth, and finally ending on sweet William Shakespeare. This is a wonderful challenge and I fully intend to do it again next year.
So, two reviews and I've reviewed everything in the challenge:
The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I have put off reviewing this book because I don't have the words to describe how powerful it is to read. My copy (which is from 1954 and now falling apart) is bookmarked all the way through. I found so much that was rich with ideas about the myth of the heroic journey that was interesting and powerful. Campbell has taken a great many of the world's religions and myths from different cultures and analyzed them for the source and description of the heroic journey. He has mined fairy tales, folklore, primitive ( how I hate this word! 'first peoples', maybe?) people's myths - Native Indians, polynesians, Australian aborigines, Norse, Celtic, Indian, African, Chinese, Japanese. It is really an amazing book. And out of all these stories of transformation, because that is what is at the heart of the heroic quest (Campbell says), he has found the cycle of the heroic quest. The Call to Adventure begins the journey, Initiation is undergone, then the return to the world. The book takes this basic journey and divides the images it examines into two great cycles into which all fairy tales,myths, folktales and world religions - which he examines for the stories, the heroic quests embedded within the religions, not as a debate or question of the authenticity of the religion itself - but why we respond to it - into two main cycles, the monomyth cycle, which is the society the individual comes from and brings back the key of transformation back to, and the cosmogonic cycle, which the universal story of creation that world religions are created from. Many of the great stories of how the world was created are examined in this section, and it is fascinating to see how different some are to my western perspective, and how similar others are.
This is a fascinating compendium of myths. There are illustrations, poems, dotting the pages, so we have a visual context. It is not a dry book by any means: "But if we are to grasp the full value of the materials, we must note that myths are not exactly comparable to dream. Their figures originate from the same sources - the unconscious wells of fantasy......And their understood function is to serve as a powerful picture language for the communication of traditional wisdom." Or: "The helpful crone and fairy godmother is a familiar feature of European fairy lore.....What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny."
This book has so full of myth and symbol that it will take several readings to absorb it all fully. It has helped me to understand myths and the role they play and why we need them, better. And that is the crux of this book: we need myths. We need fairy tales. this book explains why, what we get from them, and the dangers for a society when their myths lose meaning, as he says that our western society has been in for most of the 20th century. I think it explains why we need fantasy books and images now; some of our old myths that were cultural no longer resonate the same way because of cultural changes since the Industrial revolution, so we have to go back to the heroic quest and invent - if we can, or reclaim - myths and stories that come from deep in our souls. We need those stories to be told, or we die as a society.
I think this explains why the best fantasy is popular the world over, and why my fairy tales post (where i asked what everyones favorite fairy tale was) remains the most popular post (or the one with the most answers) so far: fairy tales live inside us, and they resonate long after we think we leave such things behind. Because, of course, we never do. The Hero With a Thousand Faces takes a look at why. I think it is a fascinating book, and i highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand what makes fairy tales and myths work, and why we need them. So when someone scoffs at a dinner party, "why do you read fantasy?" our inner fantasy bookworm can reply coolly: "Tell me your dreams and I'll tell you where you are on your life's journey." At least after reading this book, you will have a good guess at where they fall on their heroic journey!
Now for A Midsummer's Night Dream. I had forgotten I'd read this for university until I began reading it. It suddenly flooded back to me, though I can't remember anything that we discussed back then, I recalled the story. It was a change to read this and not have to worry about taking notes, thinking about papers to discuss on Shakespeare's use of alliteration, verse, or the various couples, etc! It was so enjoyable to just read the play and let my imagination show me the forest scenes,which are so fun. Here is a quote that has some folklore in it (for the challenge):
Act 2, Scene 1:
line 33: Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
MIslead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck."
This is the play that is the source of the immortal line : "The course of true love never did run smooth"(Act 1, scene 1, line 134)
Shakespeare also equates the fight between Tatiana and Oberon (the King and Queen of the fairy court) as the reason the spring has become wet and rainy and is ruining the crops: this links the fairy world with nature, with the countryside, and with the weather. Fairies are part of the world that we don't control, but which we are at the mercy at, and this play shows how easily people succumb to fairies: a little flower dust from certain plants is dusted on eyes, and suddenly characters are falling in love madly when they hated each other before! And the Queen of Fairies loves a man who is playing a donkey and becomes half a real one.....there is alot of sly humour in this play, digs at marriage, fidelity, the court, the law, and of course, true love. All the way through it, though there is Duke in the human world, it is the King and Queen of the fairies who have the real power, and the wisdom to recognize love that the Duke at first does not see.
Fun, and magical, and just the right way to end this challenge on the summer solstice. Happy longest day of the year, everyone! May a little good magic come into your life!
And, thank you, Carl for hosting this challenge.
Friday, 21 March 2008
Once Upon A Time 2 Challenge
Thanks to raidergirl3 for bringing ANOTHER challenge to my attention.
http://raidergirl3-anadventureinreading.blogspot.com/2008/03/challenge-once-upon-time-2008.html
Another challenge! My second to last one to join for this year....but as this one covers an area I'm already reading in many other challenges, this is easy to join, and fun! I love fairy tales and myths. Fantasy is one of the main categories of books I read, along with mystery. I write fantasy. So....this was almost a no-brainer for me, as soon as I saw the title I was done for (as my English husband likes to say).
Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings is hosting this challenge at http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/?p=863
Here are the rules:
"The Journey
This is really as simple as the name implies and is to Once Upon a Time as the experience was to The Sci~Fi Experience. It means you are participating but not committing yourself to any specific number of books. All reading is a journey, perhaps none more so than reading fantastical fiction. By signing up for The Journey you are agreeing to at least read one book within the four categories during March 21st to June 20th period. Just one book. It has always been of utmost importance to me that the challenges that I host be all about experiencing enjoyable literature and sharing it with others. I want you to participate. Hence, The Journey.
Quest the First
Read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time II criteria. They might all be fantasy, or folklore, or fairy tales, or mythology…or your five books might be a combination from the four genres.
Quest the Second
Read at least one book from each of the four categories. In this quest you will be reading 4 books total: one fantasy, one folklore, one fairy tale, and one mythology. This proved to be one of the more difficult quests last year merely because of the need to classify each read and determine which books fit into which category. I am not a stickler, fear not, but I was fascinated watching how folks worked to find books for each category.
Quest the Third
Fulfill the requirements for Quest the First or Quest the Second AND top it off with a June reading of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Love the story, love the films, love the idea of that magical night of the year and so this is my chance to promote the reading of this farcical love story.
Three is a magical number, a number of portent in fantastical tales, and so three quests seems about right. "
See what I mean? It is a fun challenge, and YA books apply, children's fairy tales, mythology books, all kinds of fantasy books.....and, since I have not yet chosen my Shakespeare play for the Shakespeare challenge, I have just found my answer: A Midnight Summer's Dream. Thus, I fulfill another challenge by joining this one! And I like Carl's idea of reading A Midsummer's Night Dream at midsummer - June solstice night. One of the most magical nights of the year, when the sun is up for the longest time, and the night time is the shortest. And right now, as we plow through a very chilly Easter weekend here in Ottawa, June with its scented evenings and warm nights and windows open and NO SNOW and warm air.....*sigh* I am beginning to long for signs of spring!My list for the Once Upon A Time Challenge:
I am joining Quest the Third. Again, this will be easy as I already have books in almost every section, in other challenges. I could quite easily read fantasy for most of the year! And fairy tales! I am combining Quest the Second with Shakespeare:
Mythology : The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell - DONE
Fairy Tales: The Classic Fairy Tales - Iona and Peter Opie - DONE
The Fair Folk - ed Marvin Kaye - DONE
Folktales: British Folktales - Katharine Briggs - not doing
Fantasy: A Princess of Roumania - Paul Park - DONE
Inkheart - Cornelia Funke - DONE April 6 2008
Shakespeare: A Midsummer's Night Dream (tbr June 20) - DONE June 20 2008
Alternate: Folktales: Goblins - Brian Froud (picture book of goblins) - little folk rhyme on back of book: "Where thorn-trees abound, there Goblins be found." DONE
I know, this looks like a heavy reading list. Nothing like a challenge to get me going! I had picked up A Princess of Roumania and The Fair Folk in January, and was looking for a way to incorporate them into my challenges! So I am very excited about this list, and this challenge. There were so many more books I could have chosen, but I have to be realistic, especially as I haven't begun reading any books for the Banned Book Challenge which runs in the same time frame. I love this one, and now have to finish May Sarton so I can get going on Inkheart.....or the Folktales....
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