I am an English teacher and, as such, I regularly teach Shakespeare to high schoolers. This is nearly always met with varying degrees of trepidation; even the ones who like literature and who have a good grasp of the English language find his works somewhat daunting and often boring by default. And I get it, I do, but it’s such a shame. Once you get the hang of it and manage to pierce through the – admittedly often dense – language, Shakespeare was an absolute […]
We’ll always be troubled by how things are—that’s how it stands with the difficult gift of consciousness.
By the time this came off the wait-list at the library, I had completely forgotten why my friend had recommended it to me, other than the obvious, which is that I love me some Ian McEwan. And what’s interesting to report now that I’ve read Nutshell is that I may have grown out of my McEwan faze, because this checked a LOT of my boxes but ultimately didn’t blow me out of the water. Which is not to say that this isn’t a beautiful book, […]
High School Seniors read Hamlet for you.
I don’t know if you like teenagers, but I do. They’re great; they’re terrible. But I re-read Hamlet for about the 15th time with my AP students and instead of reviewing what I thought about it for the 15th time, here’s what they said about it. The best day of class was when we talked about the “get thee to a nunnery” scene and one of my students called Hamlet a “fuck boy”. I asked them to do a 25-50 word capsule review or an […]
Lady, what are you hollering?
Well, I started the year off with a whimper. This book was glowingly recommended to me by a good friend who has led me in the past to some good stuff, so I jumped on it. I was disappointed, but the let-down was actually a little freeing, because I had just started another book she recommended, and my disappointment in Taking What I Like allowed me to give myself permission to put the other one down.* This is a book of short stories tied together […]