This post is brought to you by Coldplay

I have loved Coldplay for years but lately they have been just the thing, especially from the album X&Y. Last night for instance a song came to my mind as I was making dinner, a few bars at first and then a phrase or two of lyrics and after they ran through my head for a while I got on google and was able to take the line I knew and the fact it was Coldplay and find the song: Swallowed in the Sea. I listened to it on youtube after, it's such a beautiful little song. This is a majorly thrilling post that I should probably just delete but I really love Coldplay and their music and I'm grateful. So there you are, a pathetic little post of no significance.

The Tempest

Look at this, not even the end of June and I've finished the Tempest. I'd love to see the Tempest staged professionally, there's a lot of opportunity for cool special effects. It was sort of fun to remember back to when I was in a high school production of the Tempest, I think it was my first play. It was pretty fun, even though I had a tiny part and was costumed in a unitard (fairy, I think one fairy party was divided out to several of us). It's an enjoyable play. I'm not really sure what play I'll read next, probably a tragedy but I haven't decided yet, I've still got time to figure that out.

Finished Romeo and Juliet, maybe I just look at it from the wrong light. Maybe it's the fact that I hate tragedies and the going in with a sense of impending doom, knowing each crucial juncture along the way and still seeing things go wrong. The way I see it, there's enough tragedy in the world without going to watch it or read it for kicks.

So I haven't been doing well on the Shakespeare Project. As I may have mentioned, May's play was Romeo and Juliet, I realized on June 1st that I was about half way through. I've still yet to finish it. I still don't know that I agree with my Shakespeare professor that it's an amazing romance (I wrote a paper arguing that what R and J did was somewhat stupid, (I think I still got a B or better even though my teacher disagreed with me)). Perhaps because I think about where I was when I was R and J's ages, perhaps teens were more mature then but to me their love is puppy love not worth suicide. To be sure it's an interesting story... I don't know. I'll see about reporting back again when I do finish the play, which should be this week. Next up a comedy, I'm thinking the Tempest.

Oh wait, you mean I have to actually read or watch the plays for this Shakespeare project to work?
I did actually start reading Romeo and Juliette...like three whole pages. I'll have to work on that.

Much Ado

Much Ado About Nothing was April's play. I didn't ever watch it but it's my favorite Shakespeare play and the Kenneth Branagh version is a beloved favorite. I've seen the movie so many times that I see scenes in my head as I read them and I can tell where the movie deviates from the script. I can't really imagine a better version though the Branagh version does skip or simplify some lines and scenes, I feel like the edits make the movie and play go smoother for the modern audience watching without informative foot notes.
I love Much Ado for mostly for the fun and the wit, I love Benedick and Beatrice's exchanges, I love Dogberry's confused way of talking (Michael Keaton play's him wonderfully). Mostly I love Benedick and Beatrice, for me they are Branagh and Emma Thompson, I was first introduced to this play in middle school and we read and then watched the movie. Thompson's Beatrice has been the sort of person I've wanted to be like ever since. In my college Shakespeare class, my professor claimed that Hero and Claudio are the main characters in Much Ado, I will never believe that. Claudio is a whiny boy, Hero we hardly know or care about, Much Ado is about Beatrice and Benedick for me.
Anyway, the point of all these disjointed ramblings are that I love this play and wholeheartedly recommend it. I believe the next play for me is Romeo and Juliette. If you look for a version to watch, I'd go with this one.

Seraphina

My former roommate writes a blog where she reviews books etc. Usually I just read the blog but sometimes I read the books she reviews. This is her review of the book Seraphina. I got it and read it in about 48 hours. It was such a good book, the kind you're dying to finish so you know what's going on but you also would like to keep going on forever. I loved that this was such a complex and well researched world, I don't always love fantasy perhaps for being too much of the author's own personal dream world, I think when I do like a fantasy book or series, it's because of things like a vein of grounding reality, I'm not sure that that makes sense or that I've thought about this enough, anyway the world in this book was refreshing, almost like a historical fiction rather than a fantasy. I loved the characters and the mystery. I was a bit unhappy with the ending but I too hope that there will be more books telling Seraphina's story. Read it!