School Book: Timon of Athens

A few days ago, I finished reading Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Timon was a lot of fun to read! While it was a bit crazy, I thought it was still relevant to today.

Timon is a nobleman who loves people. He throws huge parties and gives extravagant gifts to all of his friends. But when he goes bankerupt, none of his friends will help him get back on his feet. So Timon goes from loving everyone to hating everyone.

Timon of Athens is a strange play, but highly entertaining. I really recommend reading it!

Reread: Romeo and Juliet

Before I say anything else, I need to share what Dr. Richardson said about this particular edition of Rome and Juliet. He held it up to the class and said "I'm not quite sure whether that's Juliet or Romeo on the cover. It looks young enough to be Juliet." This made me chuckle. Arden really should have gotten a better picture for the cover of this!

The class I am a TA for has to read Romeo and Juliet, so I reread it as well. I haven't read it since high school, and I really enjoyed rereading it! I had forgotten how much fun the first three acts are. And Mercutio's speeches are fantastic!!!! Definitely worth rereading!

School Book: Troilus and Cressida

I just finished reading Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and I found it a lot better than Coriolanus. It was more entertaining, and wasn't confusing like Coriolanus was.

Troilus and Cressida was described to me as Romeo and Juliet but with a pimp. While this is essentially true, it doesn't capture the full scope of the play. Troilus and Cressida is set during the Trojan Wars, and so a lot of the play involves the heroic characters of the war. The love story between Troilus and Cressida often seems to take second place to events of the war.

Troilus and Cressida is the play I will be doing a seminar on, so I am glad I enjoyed it. I'll have to do a lot more work on it in the coming month!

School Book: Coriolanus

Shakespeare's Coriolanus is the second play we're covering in my Shakespeare course. It was mentioned a lot in the introduction to Titus Andronicus, so I was excited to read it. Like Titus, Coriolanus takes place in ancient Rome. But unlike Titus, Coriolanus was a lot harder to follow.

The play opened, and it seemed like Caius Martius (who later gains the surname Coriolanus) is returning to Rome. But then he is back in battle almost immediately without returning home. After that battle, the nobles want to name him consul, but the tribunes disagree, claiming that he is too prideful. What made this strange was that he left the room when people were speaking of his great deeds; hearing of them shamed him! The play continued in this fashion, and so I remained quite thoroughly confused through the whole thing, never really sure what was going on.

I'm going to have to mull Coriolanus over a bit, and see what is said in class, but so far, this is not one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. I'm going to write a follow up in a few days though, once I've had some time (and we talk about it in class).

School Book: Titus Andronicus

I have seen the Julie Taymor film version of Titus starring Anthony Hopkins, so I vaguely remembered some of the more gruesome parts of the story. But right from the get-go Titus Andronicus managed to amaze me. From Saturninus's strange paranoia (he was most paranoid that Titus was against him even though it was Titus who made him emperor) to Titus killing one of his four remaining sons, Act 1 was one of the wildest rides I've ever been on. This is probably the most senslessly violent play I've read of Shakespeare's work. While Hamlet has a giantic body count, almost all of the killing happens near the end. Titus Andronicus is a crazy blood bath that never wants to stop.

Interlude: Piled Higher and Deeper

I didn't actually put this on the official List, so I'm counting it as an interlude. On my first Friday back in school, the Graduate Student committee had a guest speaker, Jorge Cham, present a talk on The Power of Procrastination. Jorge Cham is the creator of the comic series Piled Higher and Deeper, which depicts graduate student life at Stanford University. The talk was hilarious (when it didn't scare me off of grad school), and afterwards he had a book signing. Having never read the comic strip before, I lucked out and managed to get one of two copies of the first book that he had with him (my friend got the second copy). I've been reading the book ever since, reading a few pages whenever I needed a bit of a mental break.

Like Cham's talk, Piled Higher and Deeper is hilarious (while also somewhat terrifying - is grad school really like this?) This first volume collects the first five years of Cecilia, Mike, Tajel and the nameless hero's adventures in their respective PhD programs (Tajel is in the social sciences, while the other three appear to be in engineering). Whether on a search for funding or free food, their antics (and those of the supporting cast of characters) will have you laughing and crying (if you are yourself a grad student). I'm hoping to pick up the other volumes for some more sanity breaks in the future!

Library Book: Common Grounds Vol 1

I saw this graphic novel at work and thought it looked interesting, so I decided to grab it. Having a bit of extra time before school starts this week, I decided to read it so I could send it back without having to renew it a million times!

Common Grounds is a really neat read. There are thirteen stand alone stories in it that only share one real commonality: the coffee shop Common Grounds, where both super heroes and villians can meet without fighting. (Well, the last story also ties everything together, too; a lot of the characters from the other stories make appeances or are mentioned). Common Grounds is full of a lot of zany, colourful people and I really enjoyed their stories. I also really liked the cover art; it reminds me of the art from Justice. This is a great read if you want something a bit different from the comic book world.