Sweet Yet Sour

First, for those of you reading my blog only for the pictures of Anna, there will be no need to read further.  I am going to try to complete a series of posts that have very little to do with the kiddo.  As adorable as she is (no bias here), I want desperately not to become one of those mothers who have nothing to say about themselves and can’t complete a sentence without mentioning their children.  In general, when you have a cute kid like mine (again, no bias), you have a tendency to feel like you are the tree holding the baby.  People ignore you and pay attention only to the baby, even addressing questions like, “How old are you?” to a child that cannot possibly answer for themselves.  If I only do blog posts about Anna I might as well put leaves on my head and try my best to blend in my surroundings.  But I digress, suffice to say, come back another time Anna devotees…

For Valentine’s day, Mike who is the best husband in the world, at least for me, bought me a book.  A nice, thin book that I might actually be able to finish with the limited time that I have to read.  Bill Bryson, of “A Short History of Nearly Everything” fame, and many others, has written a book on Shakespeare for the Eminent Lives series: “Shakespeare:The World as Stage”.

Now I have to admit that although I do like Shakespeare when I read (and can understand) his work, I generally don’t seek it out to read.  It reminds me too much of high school English class where I was forced to read volumes of Shakespeare.  I do own a three volume set of Shakespeare’s “Complete Works”, but I am a person who sometimes buys books because they smell nice and this was the case for these books.  It’s a lovely hardback set and smells old – I couldn’t resist buying the set.

Despite my general lack of devotedness to Shakespeare, I really enjoyed Bryson’s book.  Bryson is quite frank that the volume is thin because we really know very little about Shakespeare and he’s not going to make stuff up.  I was actually amazed at how little we know about Shakespeare and how much conjecture Bryson had to wade through about his life.  With ease and humor Bryson pieces together what is known, dispels as best he can myths and fairy tales and still leaves you feeling as if you know much more about Shakespeare than you did before you opened the book.

Having a background in anthropology and a special interest in linguistics, the best parts of the book were those where Bryson discussed Shakespeare’s profound influence on the English language.  I had no idea how many phrases and words Shakespeare either first documented or made up himself.  I use the phrase “One fell swoop” all the time, without ever having a thought to the fact that this is a phrase that I borrow from the Bard.

I highly recommend this book for anyone even slightly interested in Shakespeare or the English language. It was fun, enlightening, and best of all for me, short!