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review 2019-09-29 04:10
Mr. Monk on the Couch by Lee Goldberg, based on the TV series created by Andy Breckman
Mr. Monk on the Couch - Lee Goldberg

This book takes place a few months after the final episode of the Monk TV series and is written from Natalie's perspective. Monk investigates a series of murders and meets a group of crime scene cleaners, who he views as kindred spirits, while Natalie feels compelled to learn more about the life and death of a man both Monk and Stottlemeyer say died of natural causes.

The used bookstore I bought this from had a bunch of Mr. Monk mysteries, and, if I remember right, I pretty much grabbed this one at random. I didn't realize it was the twelfth book in the series, and the second book set after the series finale. I'm extremely behind on the series - I can't remember exactly when I stopped watching, but I know I definitely haven't seen any of the episodes in the last two or three seasons.

Although I googled a few characters I was unfamiliar with (Monk's new psychiatrist, Lieutenant Devlin), I didn't feel like the gap in my Monk viewing hurt my reading experience much. I do think it helped that I started re-watching Season 4 of the TV series soon after starting the book. It got me in the right mood and gave me a reminder of what everyone looked like and how they tended to behave. I had somehow forgotten how self-centered and casually awful Monk could be. Yeesh. I'm glad the TV series reminded me of that before I got to the bit in the book where Monk crashed a group therapy session because he couldn't handle his brother suddenly having a sex life.

Parts of this book were perfect. The scene with Monk, Stottlemeyer, and the badly parked police cars was great, and I loved Monk's interactions with the crime scene cleaners. I'm actually kind of surprised that crime scene cleaning never came up in the show at all. Maybe too gross or gory to have on-screen?

Unfortunately, the book's various mysteries didn't intrigue me much. I figured out part of what was going on with Monk's murders well before it was revealed. The way Devlin and Natalie set their part up was interesting, at least, but I had a tough time believing that Monk would quietly allow himself to be involved, even if only a little.

Natalie's investigation into Jack Griffin's death bored me and, after a certain point, struck me as being a terrible idea. Although I appreciated her insights into the way Monk's way of doing things differed from regular detective work, it didn't make her painstaking efforts to track down where Jack Griffin's old photo might have been taken any less tedious. Ambrose and his new girlfriend/assistant Yuki got a few mentions, as they helped Natalie with her research, and Natalie spent some time evaluating her life and the sort of future she might have if she wasn't Monk's assistant. It wasn't necessarily bad, but I don't know that it was worth the amount of pages it took up.

I'm enjoying getting back into the TV series and will probably continue working my way through the seasons, assuming it stays on Amazon Prime long enough. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to read more books from this series. It did feel, at times, like reading an episode of the show, so it had that going for it.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

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url 2018-04-21 01:43
A Court of Thorns and Roses is Coming to the Big Screen!!
A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J. Maas,Jennifer Ikeda

I don't watch a lot of movies or TV shows but this is one movie I am definitely going to see! Can't wait to see who they cast- hmm??

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text 2018-02-27 20:26
Book adaptations to read before watching: 9 books and movies for the Oscar night

We're book lovers but also movie fans! When it comes to books vs. movies the winner is always the same. The book. But that doesn't discourage us from watching after reading. And the Oscars time is just perfect timing for seeking new book-and-movie inspirations.  Just remember: Read before watching! 

 

What are you reading and watching?

 

 

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BOOK:

Painfully Rich: J. Paul Getty And His Heirs by John Pearson 

When John Paul Getty died in 1976, he was the richest man in the world. This text examines the impact of the Getty legacy and its attendant pressures, family intrigues and destructive greed on the rest of the Getty family.

 

MOVIE:

All the Money in the World

The story of the kidnapping of 16-year-old John Paul Getty III and the desperate attempt by his devoted mother to convince his billionaire grandfather Jean Paul Getty to pay the ransom.

Nominated for 1 Oscar.

 

 

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BOOK:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? BY Philip K. Dick 

World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.

 

MOVIE:

Blade Runner 2049

A young blade runner's discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who's been missing for thirty years.

Nominated for 5 Oscars

 

 

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BOOK:

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman 

 

Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time.

 

MOVIE:

Call Me by Your Name

In 1980s Italy, a romance blossoms between a seventeen year-old student and the older man hired as his father's research assistant.

Nominated for 4 Oscars. 

 

 

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BOOK:

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan 

 

In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm?a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not?charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.

 

MOVIE:

Mudbound

Two men return home from World War II to work on a farm in rural Mississippi, where they struggle to deal with racism and adjusting to life after war.

Nominated for 4 Oscars. 

 

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BOOK:

Stronger: Fighting Back After the Boston Marathon Bombing by Jeff Bauman

Jeff Bauman woke up on 16th April 2013, in the Boston Medical Center, groggy from a series of lifesaving surgeries and missing his legs. Just 30 hours prior, Jeff was surrounded by revelry at the finish line of the Boston Marathon cheering on his girlfriend, Erin, when the first bomb went off at his feet. When Jeff awoke, rather than take stock of his completely altered life, he ripped out his breathing tube and tried to speak. He couldn't. So he wrote seven words, 'Saw the guy. Looked right at me,' setting off one of the biggest manhunts in the country's history and beginning his own brave road to recovery. 

 

MOVIE:

Stronger

Stronger is the inspiring real life story of Jeff Bauman, an ordinary man who captured the hearts of his city and the world to become a symbol of hope after surviving the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

 

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BOOK:

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero,Tom Bissell 

In 2003, an independent film called The Room - starring and written, produced, and directed by a mysteriously wealthy social misfit named Tommy Wiseau - made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as 'like getting stabbed in the head', the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Over a decade later, The Room is an international cult phenomenon, whose legions of fans attend screenings featuring costumes, audience rituals, merchandising and thousands of plastic spoons.

 

MOVIE: 

The Disaster Artist

When Greg Sestero, an aspiring film actor, meets the weird and mysterious Tommy Wiseau in an acting class, they form a unique friendship and travel to Hollywood to make their dreams come true.

Nominated for 1 Oscar.

 

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BOOK:

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool by Peter Turner 

A description of Gloria Grahame's last days recalls her past in New York and her eccentric life in a trailer and her life in Liverpool, where the author and his family cajoled, comforted, and wept with the dying Hollywood star.

 

MOVIE:

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

A romance sparks between a young actor and a Hollywood leading lady.

 

 

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BOOK:

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung 

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed. Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

 

MOVIE:

First They Killed My Father

Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung recounts the horrors she suffered as a child under the rule of the deadly Khmer Rouge.

 

 

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BOOK:

Molly's Game: Inside the Wolrd of High Stakes Poker by Molly Bloom 

When Molly Bloom was a little girl in a small Colorado town, she dreamed of a life without rules and limits, a life where she didn’t have to measure up to anyone or anything – where she could become whatever she wanted. She ultimately got more than she ever could have bargained for. In Molly’s Game, she takes you through her adventures running an exclusive private poker game catering to Hollywood royalty like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck, athletes, billionaires, politicians and financial titans. With rich detail, Molly describes a world of glamour, privilege and secrecy in which she made millions, lived the high life and fearlessly took on the Russian and Italian mobs – until she met the one adversary she could not outsmart: the United States government.

 

MOVIE:

Molly's Game

The true story of Molly Bloom, an Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game and became an FBI target.

Nominated for 1 Oscar.

 

What are you reading and watching?

 

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review SPOILER ALERT! 2017-10-23 15:03
Glowing Fish & Bucketfuls of Spider Silk in Goat Milk, Frankenstein’s Cat by Emily Anthes Showcases Some of the Wonders of the Biotechnological World While also Raising Some Important Questions!
Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts - Emily Anthes

 

 

 

The penultimate installment in Project Frankenstein was a joy to read. It was relatively short and full of stuff that I find interesting. I am dividing this review into three parts:

 

1. Here is a Snippet from the book:

 

 

2. Then there were these Sciency Bits that I enjoyed ruminating upon:

Cloning other adult mammals reinforced the discovery that nuclear transfer can reset genes contained in specialized cells back to their embryonic state.

It meant that the genetic clock could supposedly be turned back if things didn’t go so well the first time!

It is my content that the northern grasslands would have remained viable…had the great herds of Pleistocene animals remained in place to maintain the landscape.

This occurred to me for the first time. Yes, the Ice Ages may have changed the landscape physically but it also caused the extinction of the grazers and caused changes in a roundabout way.

…(tuna) are warm-blooded, which makes them oddities in the fish world but keeps them toasty…

They are what?! Why are you doing this to me world? I was so happy, thinking all fish are cold-blooded but no! I hate nature!

International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT)

While The Sixth Extinction left me without hope, this book helped me see that we aren’t all bad eggs. Yes, humans have brought the onset of Anthropocene and change environment wherever they go…

We have harvested so many of these large deer, elk, and sheep over the centuries that many species have evolved smaller body and horn sizes. Similarly, fish have adapted to human harvesting by developing thinner bodies capable of sneaking out of nets.

Yet, organizations like ICCAT are keeping track of the number of bluefin tuna that are being pulled out of water annually. The Integrated Ocean Observing System is tagging elephant seals and other swimmers to gather information about the marine environment. Then there is Ocean Tracking Network that has been busy installing underwater listening stations that will pick up on tagged animals. The list of scientists and researchers trying to collect information goes on and on. There is even an attempt to engage the public and increase awareness via animal Facebook profiles. The point is, it took us decades if not more to wreck things. We will need some time to put them back together and it is a pity if nature doesn’t grant us that respite.

 

3. And a Franken-Bit that I shook an admonitory finger at:

The manufacturers of AquAdvantage salmon think that by producing only sterile female fish, they can keep them from reproducing or passing along their genes.

 

 

Even though the book raises pertinent questions about whether animals can incur psychological damage from being tagged, it doesn’t answer them. To be fair, most of us won’t be able to say no to a drug, if it would save a loved one, even if one or two clauses of animal rights weren’t observed!

 

Could you?

 

Image

 

Originally published at midureads.wordpress.com on October 23, 2017.

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text 2017-06-26 00:05
Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, and London: Shakespeare, Hogwarts, and Shopping
Shakespeare's Gardens - Andrew Lawson,Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,Jackie Bennett
Shakespeare and the Stuff of Life: Treasures from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,Tara Hamling,Delia Garratt
Hamlet: Globe to Globe - Dominic Dromgoole
Year of the Fat Knight: The Falstaff Diaries - Antony Sher
The Lives of Tudor Women - Elizabeth Norton
The Gap of Time - Jeanette Winterson
Vinegar Girl - Anne Tyler
And Furthermore - Judi Dench
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari
The Wrong Side of Goodbye - Michael Connelly

Stratford

 

A Scene at the RSC Book and Gift Shop

 

The date: June 17, 2017. The time: Approximately 10:00AM.

 

TA and friend enter; TA asks for a shopping basket and makes straight for the shelves and display cases. An indeterminate amount of time is then spent browsing. Whenever her friend points out something and asks "Did you see this?", TA silently points to the steadily growing contents of her basket.  Finally, with a sigh, TA makes for the cashier.

 

Shop assistant: I can see why you asked for a basket when you came in ... So, do you come here often?

 

TA: I try to make it every 2 or 3 years.  [With a sheepish grin:]  And yes, my shopping basket does look like that pretty much every single time, I'm afraid.

 

TA's friend: I can confirm that ...

 

TA: Yeah, she's seen my library at home.

 

TA's friend: Err, I can confirm the shopping sprees as well.

 

Shop assistant (ringing up and bagging one item after another): Well, enjoy your, um, reading ...!

 

Similar scenes, albeit minus the above dialogue were repeated at two of the book & gift stores of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Henley Street (WS birthplace) and Hall's Croft (home of his daughter Judith and her husband, Dr. John Hall, a physician) -- where we actually did spend a fair amount of time talking to the museum assistants, too, though, about everything from visiting Shakekspearean sites to Wimbledon tennis.

 

That being said, we "of course" paid our (well, my) hommage to the Bard, from Trinity Church to the two above-mentioned Shakespeare family houses (return visits all to me, though Hall's Croft was new to my friend), and just as importantly, we had tickets for two of the current "Roman plays" season productions:

 

(1) Antony & Cleopatra, starring Josette Simon and Anthony Byrne in the title roles, with Andrew Woodall as Enobarbus:  One of the best productions of this particular play that I've ever seen.  Josette Simon alone was worth the price of admission ten times over, plus she and Byrne played off each other magnificently, and Andrew Woodall was unlike any Enobarbus I'd seen before, wonderfully highlighting the ironic subtext of his character's lines and giving him more than a hint of a laconic note.  If you're in England and anywhere near Stratford, run and get a ticket for this production ... or if you don't make it all the way to Warwickshire, try to catch it in London when they move the production there.

 

(2) Julius Caesar, starring Andrew Woodall as Caesar and James Corrigan as Marc Antony.  I liked this one, too -- how can any RSC production ever be bad?! -- but by far not as much as Antony and Cleopatra on the night before.  Woodall was a fine Caesar, even if actually a bit too like his Enobarbus (which I might not have found quite as obvious if I hadn't seen both plays practically back to back, on two consecutive nights), and the cast generally did a good job, but this was clearly a "look at all our up-and-coming-talent" sort of production, with almost all of the play's lead roles given to actors who were easily 5, if not 10 or more years younger than the parts they played, which didn't quite work for me -- these people are Roman senators and generals, for crying out loud, and for the most part the requisite gravitas simply wasn't there (yet); even if the talent clearly was.  What a contrast to the very age-appropriate and, as I said, just all around magnificent production of Antony and Cleopatra ... Still, I'm by no means sorry we went to see this, and it's obvious even now that we'll be seeing a lot more of these actors in years to come.

 

We also managed to snag last-minute tickets for a "behind the scenes" tour -- I'd done one in 2014 already, but was more than happy to repeat the experience!  Now I only wish our own opera and theatre company had half the resources that the RSC has at its disposal ...

 

    
Photos, from top left:

1. Shakespeare's bust, above his grave in Trinity Church

2. Shakespeare's epitaph, on his gravestone (photo from 2014, since I didn't get a really good one this time around. N.B., the photo is actually upside down, for somewhat greater ease of reading the inscription.)

3. Trinity Church -- the graves of Shakespeare and his family are located in the part to the left of the tower.

4. River Avon, with RSC Theatre and, in the background, the spire of Trinity Church

5. RSC Theatre

6. Shakespeare's Birthplace (Henley Street)

7.Shakespeare Birthplace Trust centre, next to the actual Henley Street Birthplace building

8. Hall's Croft, garden view

9.New Place and Guild Chapel (photo from 2014)

10. New Place gardens, looking towards RSC and Swan Theatres (also a photo from 2014 -- we didn't make it inside New Place this time around, though we did pass by there on our way from our B&B to the RSC theatre and to Henley Street and back).

 

Now, since Manuel Antao elsewhere insisted on "the full list" -- the grand total result of the above-mentioned shopping sprees, plus a brief supplementary foray into an airport W.H. Smith, was the following:

 

CDs:

* William Shakespeare: Antony & Cleopatra: Music and Speeches from the 2017 Royal Shakespeare Company Production

* William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar: Music and Speeches from the 2017 Royal Shakespeare Company Production

* William Shakespeare: King Lear: Music and Speeches from the 2016 Royal Shakespeare Company Production -- which alas I had to miss, but it starred Antony Sher as Lear, whom I saw as Falstaff in 2014 ... which in turn was just about all the reason I needed to get the audio version of his Lear, too.

*  William Shakespeare: The Tempest: Music and Speeches from the 2016 Royal Shakespeare Company Production -- which I also had to miss, but I figured even if I was a year late ... (plus, Simon Russell Beale as Prospero and directed -- like the 2016 Lear -- by Gregory Doran ...?!)

*  William Shakespeare: King Richard III, full cast audio recording starring Kenneth Branagh -- a long-time must-have from my TBR or, err, "to-be-listened-to" list.

The British Library, with Ben and David Crystal: Shakespeare's original pronunciation: Speeches and scenes performed as Shakespeare would have heard them -- there's a video version of this on Youtube (I think Lora posted about it here a while back), and if you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend remedying that sooner rather than later.  It gives you a whole new insight into Shakespeare's use of language ... down to lingusitic puns, allusions and images that you really only pick up on once you've heard what the Bard and his original audiences would have heard in the delivery of the respective lines.

 

Books: 

*  Jackie Bennett, with photographs by Andrew Lawson: Shakespeare's Gardens -- a lavishly illustrated coffee table book-sized guide to the gardens Shakespeare knew (or might have known) both in Stratford / Warwickshire and in London, as well as on the gardens of the five Shakespeare-related houses in and around Stratford, with an introductory chapter on Tudor gardening in general.  THE find of several great finds of this trip.  (And it's even an autographed copy ... as I only discovered when I unpacked the book back home!)

*  Roy Strong: The Quest for Shakespeare's Garden -- similar to the above (though smaller in format) and a great complementary book, with plenty of historical illustrations and leading up to a focus on the New Place garden, which has painstakingly been restored in period style in recent years.

*  Delia Garratt and Tara Hamling (eds.): Shakespeare and the Stuff of Life: Treasures from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust -- an illustrated guide to Shakespeare's life and times in the style of the recently-popular "so-and-so [insert topic] in 100 objects" books, with 50 representative objects covering the key aspects of Shakespeare's life from cradle to grave.

*  Peter Sillitoe & Maurice Hindle (ed.): Shakespearean London Theatres -- what the title says, but with a handy walking map allowing the aficionado to trace not merely the locations of the various theatres but also get a sense of the areas where they were located ... or at least, their respective modern incarnations.

*  Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells (eds.), with contributions by, inter alia and in addition to the editors, Graham Holderness, Charles Nicholl, Andrew Hadfield and John Jowett, and an afterword by James Shapiro: Shakespeare Beyond Doubt -- a scholarly refutation of the various "alternate authorship" theories.

*  Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells (eds.), with contributions by, inter alia and in addition to the editors, Michael Wood, Graham Holderness, Germaine Greer and Andrew Hadfield, and an afterword by Margaret Drabble: The Shakespeare Circle -- a collective biography of Shakespeare's family, friends, business associates and patrons; a bit like Stanley Wells's earlier Shakespeare & Co., but not merely focusing on the other key figures of Elizabethan theatre, and with individual chapters / essays designated to individual persons (or families), instead of the continuous narrative contained in Shakespeare & Co.

*  James Shapiro: 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear -- pretty much what the title implies; a follow-up to Shapiro's earlier focus on Shakespeare's life in 1599.

*  Frank Kermode: Shakespeare's Language -- also pretty much what the title says, with a joint examination of the pre-Globe plays' poetic and linguistic characteristics and a play-by-play examination of the last 16 plays, beginning with Julius Caesar.

*  Dominic Dromgoole: Hamlet: Globe to Globe -- the Globe Theatre Artistic Director's account of their recent, 2-year-long venture of taking a production of Hamlet to (literally) every single country in the world.

*  Antony Sher: Year of the Fat Knight: The Falstaff Diaries -- a must-read for anyone who's been fortunate enough to see the RSC's 2014 productions of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and still a rioting good read if you haven't.  Plus, the most amazing sketches by Sher himself ... the man is an artist several times over!

*  Antony Sher & Gregory Doran: Woza Shakespeare! Titus Andronicus in South Africa -- not new, but it's been on my TBR for a while and I figured while I was at it ...

*  Sheridan Morley: John Gielgud: The Authorized Biography -- comment unnecessary.

* Jonathan Croall, with a prologue by Simon Callow: Gielgoodies! The Wit and Wisdom [& Gaffes] of John Gielgud -- a frequently hilarious complementary read to the above bio.

*  Harriet Walter: Brutus and Other Heroines: Playing Shakespeare's Roles for Women -- plus, I might add, plenty of insight into Shakespearean theatre in particular and acting in general.

*  Harriet Walter: Other People's Shoes: Thoughts on Acting -- as the title implies, more of the above, though minus the near-exclusive focus on Shakespeare. (Instead, however, also a professional autobiography of sorts.)

*  Judi Dench: And Furthermore -- her memoirs.  Very much looking forward to this one.

*  Jeanette Winterson: The Gap of Time -- Hogarth Shakespeare adaptation series, The Winter's Tale.

*  Anne Tyler: Vinegar Girl -- Hogarth Shakespeare adaptation series, The Taming of the Shrew.

* Howard Jacobson: Shylock Is My Name -- Hogarth Shakespeare adaptation series, The Merchant of Venice. (I could have gone on and gotten more of those, but I figured I'd limit myself to three to begin with ... :) )

*  Ian Doescher: William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope -- I know, I know.  Everybody but me has already read it at this point.

*  Elizabeth Norton: The Lives of Tudor Women -- a(nother) proximate choice, since I've spent so much time in their world (and that of their Plantagenet sisters / ancestors) recently, thanks in no small part to Samantha [Carpe Librum]!

*  Robert Harris: Imperium -- Cicero trilogy, book 1.  And yes, there is a Shakespeare connection even here ... think " 'twas all Greek to me."  (Also, as was to be expected, the RSC bookstore had Harris's complete Roman series on their shelves as companion reads (of sorts) to their current Roman  plays season.)

*  Yuval Noah Harari: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind -- no Shakespeare connection here; unless Harari should be (justly) citing to Shakespeare as an exponent of human genius, that is.  Anyway, this is where the airport W.H. Smith came in handy.

*  Michael Connelly: The Wrong Side of Goodbye -- see Harari above! :)

 

Plus a blue RSC silk scarf, a Macbeth quote T-shirt (can't have too much of the Scottish play, ever), a First Folio canvas bag (had to get something to carry all my new treasures home in, after all), a couple of Shakespeare- and Tudor-related postcards, and of course a few more Shakespeare quote mugs and refrigerator magnets for my respective collections.

 

Oxford

On the way from London to Stratford, we'd stopped by in Oxford: This being merely an extended weekend trip, we didn't have a lot of time, but since our last attempt to visit this half of Oxbridge had literally been drowned by floods of torrential rain (so we ended up spending virtually all the time in the Museum of Natural History), I'd promised my friend a short visit at least -- all the more since I myself had actually spent a few days in Oxford in the interim with my mom. Well, with the weather cooperating this time around, we at least managed a stroll along Broad Street and down Catte Street to Radcliffe Square, then past St. Mary's Church to "the High," a brief climb up Carfax Tower, and finally a visit to Hogwarts, err, Christchurch College (Tom Quad, Chapel, Great Hall and all).

 

 



Photos, from top left:

1. View from Radcliffe Square down Catte St.: Radcliffe Camera and Bodleian Library to the left; Hereford College to the right.

2. View from Carfax Tower towards St. Mary's Church, Radcliffe Camera, Hereford College, Magdalen College, and New College.

3. / 4.: Christchurch College: Tom Quad with Tom Tower (left photo) and Chapel and Great Hall (right photo).

5.: Christchurch College, Chapel.

6.: Christchurch College, Great Hall.

 

(We had, incidentally, also been planning for a stop in Cambridge on the return trip from Stratford, but that had to be cancelled ... which is a story for another day.  Also, this will now obviously necessitate yet another joint trip to England at some point or other!)

 

 

London

London, where we actually started our trip, was the first scheduled "shopping spree" stop: Since we've both visited London repeatedly before, no mad bouts of "mandatory" sightseeing were included; rather, merely being there tends to make both of us pretty happy campers in and of itself.  Since we've also more or less worked out a route covering the stores that we tend to hit on a routine basis whenever we're visiting, it took us all but five hours to complete our program, from Neal's Yard Remedies (at the original Neal's Yard location in Seven Dials) all the way to Fortnum & Mason's, with various other stops thrown in on the way, chiefly among those, Whittard of Chelsea and, this time around, Crabtree & Evelyn (which we actually do have in Germany, too, but the London branches had those irresistible sales ... (sigh)).  Since I knew I was going to spend a lot of money buying books in Stratford, I decided -- with a somewhat heavy heart -- to forego my usual Charing Cross Road stops on this occasion; though towards the end of the aforementioned five hours (1) my left knee started to give me serious trouble, and (2) we were already laden with our other purchases to such an extent that even I had to admit there would have been no way we'd be able to carry back books to our hotel on top, so I was grudgingly reconciled ... though only for the moment, and with the effect of instantly resolving to return to England sooner rather than later; a resolution that has since blossomed in fully-blown plans for a longer (and solo) follow-up trip, from the England / Wales border all the way to the Norfolk coast -- and in addition to plenty of sightseeing, I've also promised myself plenty of book store stops along the way.

 

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