12-Week Update on My 2024 Reading Goals

Is it sad that I already want to bail on half of it?

It's not Shakespeare's fault.

I just really didn't want to read any more of him after finishing Henry V.

So I didn’t.

Instead, I read The Skin of Our Teeth and A Man for All Seasons.

Falling behind on Shakespeare might mean I don’t finish his complete works this year, and I might adjust my goal to just reading his histories. Comedy and tragedy can wait.

Lest you worry that my lack of reading indicates some trials in my life, it’s quite the reverse. I’ve had more time to write lately!

Am I the Drama?

1. The Complete Works of Shakespeare:

   1. Sonnets 1-12, King John, Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2

   2. Henry V

2. The Complete Plays of Chekhov

3. The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder: Enjoyable, and deliberately less accessible than a play like Our Town, this play is about how mankind repeatedly drags itself back from the brink of destruction. Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus have been married for 5,000 years, their son is Cain, their maid is a Sabine woman, but it’s also 1942 and they’re both in their mid-forties. Yes, it’s confusing. Funny and sometimes moving, but confusing.

4. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

5. A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt: Probably my favorite thing I’ve read this year. I was always fond of the movie, but I haven’t seen it in over a decade. I plan to watch it soon. What moved me most in reading the script was the friendship between Thomas More and the Duke of Norfolk.

6. Becket by Jean Anouilh

7. Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles

8. Medea by Euripides

Next Steps

1. Becket by Jean Anouilh

2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

3. Henry VI, Part 1

Other Things I Finished

• Just Stab Me Now by Jill Bearup - I read it twice

• The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi

• Haha, can that really be it?

Currently Reading

• Crosswicks: A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

• Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

• The Americans by Harold Coy

A Favorite Quote

From A Man for All Seasons:

Norfolk: Oh, confound all this… I’m not a scholar, as Master Cromwell never tires of pointing out, and frankly I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas, look at those names… You know those men! Can’t you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship?

More (Moved): And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?

Book Reviews from My Daughters