Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
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What else are you reading? (June 2010 - May 2013) *closed*
Lou wrote: "Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: "A book I thought I'd never read and actually loved was Madame Bovary. "Madame Bovary irritates the heck out of me. So does Hamlet."
I actually really enjoyed Hamlet. What I couldn't get into, Shakespeare-wise, was Romeo and Juliet. Maybe because of the extensive exposure in school, theater, films, and whatnot. But when I read it myself, I didn't like Juliet all that much. Nor Romeo. Nor the story. Of course, when I would dare to say such a thing, people would start screaming blasphemy and hold out crosses to evict the evil. :D
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The all-time best comment on Romeo and Juliet I've heard was made by my then-midschool-aged daughter. She was quite convinced and made a good case that the "villain" in R&J was the friar: "It was all the friar's fault because he enabled them!"
Karen wrote: "Katharina wrote: "What I couldn't get into, Shakespeare-wise, was Romeo and Juliet..."The all-time best comment on Romeo and Juliet I've heard was made by my then-midschool-aged daughter. She was..."
Hahaha, that is awesome. I think, I like the friar now :)
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Wittenberg.
I've been off and on something of a Hamlet fanatic, or very (very) amateur "scholar," over the years. I've seen more than a handful of live versions, collected Hamlet films, and scratched the surface (barely) of Hamlet criticism. There may be more written about Hamlet than any other literary work, or maybe it just seemed that way. There was a time when I could recite several of the soliloquies and refer to conflicting theories about this and that, but it's mostly gone now, except I can usually spot phrase references in other works. ;-)
And I'll go along with Hj about Hamlet and Horatio. Have done so since I watched a friend cast as Horatio way back in the mid-70s.
Karen wrote: "Calathea wrote: "Do you remember where Hamlet and the guys attended university? "Wittenberg."
Yes, you're right of course! :D
And you might have guessed that I asked for a reason. The thing is, Uni Wittenberg is the older part of my alma mater (founded 1502 and 192 years older than the nowadays main part). Everytime I think about how Shakespeare sent Hamlet there and it already existed at that time and that I attended same uni like Hamlet (generally speaking) I'm about to giggle like mad.
Lou wrote: "Madame Bovary irritates the heck out of me. So does Hamlet. "Awww I love me some Hamlet. Goes well with eggs.... :)
But really, crazy play, isn't it.
Katharina wrote: "What I couldn't get into, Shakespeare-wise, was Romeo and Juliet. Maybe because of the extensive exposure in school, theater, films, and whatnot. But when I read it myself, I didn't like Juliet all that much. Nor Romeo. Nor the story. Of course, when I would dare to say such a thing, people would start screaming blasphemy and hold out crosses to evict the evil. :D ..."Most people get put off Romeo and Juliet here because it is taught (badly) in 10th grade. I was suffering through it myself in that grade and then our regular teacher was sick. The Substitute teacher really made that play come alive and it was wonderful after that.
I also really love the Franco Zephirelli film and the modern R&J with Leonardo diCaprio. Of course Mercutio was my favorite character there. The first one bumped off by the rivalry.
In spring I plan to go see a local production of West Side Story. Looking forward to it.
Lou wrote: "Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: "A book I thought I'd never read and actually loved was Madame Bovary. "Madame Bovary irritates the heck out of me. So does Hamlet."
Madame Bovary is irritating and sort of spineless and a coward, but I loved the book.
I like Hamlet because it has a lot of great lines, but my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth.
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Wittenberg."
Yes, you're right of course! :D
And you might have guessed that I asked for a reason...."
I also caught this tidbit (via Wikipedia):
"Prince Hamlet is said to have studied in Wittenberg and it was the supposed home of Dr Faustus."
War and Peace, Proust, Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, the Scottish play and then there's me and I've just downloaded BRB... War and Peace will have to wait.
Karen wrote: "I also caught this tidbit (via Wikipedia):"Prince Hamlet is said to have studied in Wittenberg and it was the supposed home of Dr Faustus."
"
The figur from legend and literature, yes. The real Dr. Faustus probably not. :)
Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: "I like Hamlet because it has a lot of great lines, but my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth."
It's the same with me. ;)
Katharina wrote: "On a different note: I've had War and Peace (Tolstoi) looming in my book shelf for a while now. I don't think I can escape much longer... has anyone here read it and can tell me whether I'm going t..."I enjoyed it when I was a bored teenager with many hours to kill. It has some good parts, but it rambles on and on.
Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: "I like Hamlet because it has a lot of great lines, but my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth. "My favorite too. Witches! Ghosts! Lots of dead bodies! What could be more fun.
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Have you seen Kurosawa's Throne of Blood? Toshiro Mifune, a very long death scene...
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My favorite too. Witches! Ghosts! Lots of dead bodies! What could be more fun."
I think Hamlet may have a higher death count, at least of main and named characters: Hamlet I (prior-play), Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Hamlet. Poor Horatio is left to explain it all to the victorious Fortinbras. Just one ghost and no witches though...
Karen wrote: "I think Hamlet may have a higher death count"LOL! But just one ghost! Really, William, what where you thinking?
Antonella wrote: "But just one ghost! Really, William, what where you thinking?"LOL!
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Blood Red Butterfly
Open Cover Before Striking
The Other Guy
Screwing the System
Very different books and all 5-star-for-me reads.
I posted a short initial-response comment on this group's BRB page. Yum!
The Okati book (Open Cover) was a surprise, the first I read by this author and one of the more originally written and plotted m/m books I've read. Likely not for everyone just based on the way it's written. I hope her other books don't have similar internal voices for her MCs, because it worked very well for these characters but I'd find it to be exhausting if carried over. The synopsis really doesn't do it justice.
Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: ". . . my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth."Yes! But I generally admire Marlowe much more than Shakespeare.
Karen wrote: "Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: "I like Hamlet because it has a lot of great lines, but my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth."Have you seen Kurosawa's Throne of Blood? Toshiro..."
Yes! I like everything Kurosawa too :) It's strange because I got to Kurosawa through Sergio Leone and Western movies in general.
K.Z. wrote: "Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: ". . . my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth."Yes! But I generally admire Marlowe much more than Shakespeare."
I didn't study English literature at university, I studied it at high school, and while we spent a lot of time on Shakespeare, we didn't spend as much time on Marlowe, so I never got the keys to understand his works. Since I plan to go back to university after I retire to finally study English literature (in 30 years time I'm afraid), I'll get to Chris :)
K.Z. wrote: "Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: ". . . my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth."Yes! But I generally admire Marlowe much more than Shakespeare."
Ah, but some would say that in admiring Shakespeare you'd also be admiring Marlowe. I'm referring to the theory that it was Marlowe who wrote the plays which bear Shakespeare's name: see Marlowe's Ghost by Sarah Black (a very good m/m book) and Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare by Daryl Pinksen.
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:-)
Hj wrote: "see Marlowe's Ghost by Sarah Black (a very good m/m book) "... an excellent m/m book ;-))
Antonella wrote: "Hj wrote: "see Marlowe's Ghost by Sarah Black (a very good m/m book) "... an excellent m/m book ;-))"
Thought more people here might be inclined to check it out if I mentioned that aspect... I really enjoyed it (I think it's a good story even if you have no interest in the Marlowe/Shakespeare issue) and it inspired me to find and read the other book.
Hj wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "Emanuela ~plastic duck~ wrote: ". . . my favorite Shakespeare, it will never change, is Macbeth."Yes! But I generally admire Marlowe much more than Shakespeare."
Ah, but some would ..."
:) I'm familiar with the theory. Thanks for the recs, Hj. I'll have to check them out.
Marlowe's an excellent subject for gay historical fic, since many scholars have speculated he was homosexual. He seems to have led a life full of controversy that came to an early and tragic end (he was only in his late twenties when he was stabbed to death--in the eye). Yup, Marlowe fascinates me, and I think Dr. Faustus is brilliant.
I always wonder why people have to pit Shakespeare and Marlowe against each other? Does it HAVE to be either/or? Can't both be recognized for their contributions to the literary canon?
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I think I bought it from Amazon before you wanted t..."
I'm not sure how that works. Do you have to redownload? Or do the updates happen automatically when you connect to wifi?
Any experts here?
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..."
Maybe. Maybe that's part of it. It is kind of disconcerting (and embarrassing) to make so many dumb mistakes. It's not like I wasn't trying to be careful, too.
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Heh.
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Have you seen Kurosawa's Throne of Blood? Toshiro..."
Oh yes.
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:-D
Not even sure what that means, but it always makes me laugh.
I just checked Amazon's Help pages and found this on Automatic Book Updates:"Automatic Book Updates
You can receive the improved versions of all your books by opting in to receive book updates automatically. You can do this by visiting Manage Your Kindle at http://amazon.co.uk/MYKupdate and clicking on the Manage Your Devices section.
You will find an option labelled Automatic Book Update. Under Actions, select Turn On.
To ensure you retain your notes, highlights, bookmarks and furthest reading locations, you will need to turn on Annotation Backup on your Kindle.
Please note, Annotations Backup is enabled automatically on Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle for Android and Kindle for Windows 8. You cannot turn off Annotations Backup on these devices." (It then goes on explaining how to turn it on for various devices.)
So, Josh, I *think* this means that if you've given Amazon updates then they will be pushed through to us readers. But (of course) I don't know anything about the relationship between Amazon and authors, and what (if anything) you have to do to get them to issue an update.
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"Automatic Book Updates
You can receive the improved versions of all your books by opting in to receive book updates a..."
I think that makes sense. It doesn't give an option for not offering updates, so I think it must be automatic.
Josh wrote: "Hj wrote: "Josh wrote: "I've yanked the file three times from Amazon because of really stupid, inexcusable mistakes on my part that *had* to be fixed. ..."I think I bought it from Amazon before y..."
If you activated the option to receive automatic updates on your purchased files, it should be re-downloaded automagically. If not, when you go to your account and look at your files, there should be an option like "update available" or something like that and you can force the download on your kindle.
ETA: you already found out :)
Hj wrote: "I just checked Amazon's Help pages and found this on Automatic Book Updates:"Automatic Book Updates
You can receive the improved versions of all your books by opting in to receive book updates a..."
Thanks for that, Hj. Mine wasn't turned on. It is now :D
Lou wrote: "I had nothing against Shakespeare's words, but Hamlet is such a whiny little weasel who gets about everyone killed just because he doesn't have the cajones to confront his uncle directly.Not surp..."
Yep. That's the entire point though. Hamlet's fatal flaw is that he cannot act. He can only think about it.
My favorite tragedy is MacBeth, though I also like King Lear quite a bit and Julius Caesar.
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My opinion of course, but this is more complex than no balls and an inability to act.
Hamlet is a student-prince. He wasn't expecting his father's death and is unprepared to take his father's place. In any case, due to Shakespeare's version of Danish succession laws, he is somehow usurped (postponed) from doing so by his uncle, who takes his brother's (Hamlet's father's) place in his mother's bed as well as on his throne. Hamlet isn't a warrior-prince like Fortinbras. He doesn't accept the words of friends or the words of a ghost without consideration. He has book skills and fencing skills and he over-thinks everything — except when he does act. Then his actions are either overly complicated (the play within the play, feigned insanity, the R&G assassination) or overly impulsive (mistaking Polonius for Claudius and killing him, leaping into Ophelia's grave, accepting a duel that is sure not to end well).
In the early 1600s, Shakespeare pulled off an angsty post-modern hero, one I find a lot more intriguing than the decisive bully-boy Fortinbras. As for the others, hoist(ed) with their own petard(s)? With the exception of Ophelia, caught in the crossfire.
Karen wrote: "In the early 1600s, Shakespeare pulled off an angsty post-modern hero, one I find a lot more intriguing than the decisive bully-boy Fortinbras. As for the others, hoist(ed) with their own petard(s)? With the exception of Ophelia, caught in the crossfire. ..."True. My English prof said that the original lines of the soliloquy was supposed to be: "To do or not to do" and was later changed. I wonder if that is true or not.
My very favorite bit from Shakespeare is MacBeth's soliloquy Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
Very existential.
Lou wrote: "I had nothing against Shakespeare's words, but Hamlet is such a whiny little weasel who gets about everyone killed just because he doesn't have the cajones to confront his uncle directly.Not surprisingly, I'm a big fan of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."
Ditto. It took me several viewings of the film before I figured out what was going on, but it was worth the time. Still, Hamlet is one of my favorites.
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My very favorite bit from Shakespeare is MacBeth's soliloquy Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."
That's a particular favorite of mine as well.
There is no definitive Hamlet text/playbook. It's complicated, and scholars argue over both tiny (a word) and large (whether a whole speech was meant to have been deleted) issues. We're looking at works completed over 400 years ago, that were modified during production, and written before some of the most general conventions of English spelling and punctuation were agreed upon. Branagh's "full-text" film version is an amalgam of the quartos (Q1 and Q2) and the First Folio, a script that would never have been performed in Shakespeare's time. There's an interesting scholarly project comparing these sources side by side (a glimpse of it can be seen on the Wikipedia Hamlet page).
Here's more info: http://shakespeare-online.com/biograp...
Lou wrote: "Susinok wrote: "My very favorite bit from Shakespeare is MacBeth's soliloquy Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."That's my favorite too."
Mine too.
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..."
Yeah, Hamlet got that from me. I was just thinking the very thing this morning.
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The Scottish Play remains my favorite of the Tragedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite of the comedies. I could quote long passages from it when I was in junior high! Now there's a not very useful skill for a junior high schooler.
I absolutely loved Shylocks's monologue in 'The Merchant of Venice'. It just struck a chord with me and I've read it so often back then, I still know it by heart, years later. ... ("I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge?")
I have to admit, I still haven't read Macbeth. It's been on my must-read-at-some-point-list forever, though...
Katharina wrote: "("I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge?")..."Very nice! I have read that play but it's been long ago and I'd forgotten.
I love Midsummer Night, but I have fond memories of As You Like It. The bad poetry tacked to trees. "men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." Excellent comic misplaced modifier, hehe.
Katharina wrote: "I actually really enjoyed Hamlet. What I couldn't get into, Shakespeare-wise, was Romeo and Juliet. Maybe because of the extensive exposure in school, theater, films, and whatnot. But when I read it myself, I didn't like Juliet all that much. Nor Romeo. Nor the story. Of course, when I would dare to say such a thing, people would start screaming blasphemy and hold out crosses to evict the evil. :D"I'm with you all the way on this. Hamlet? Love. R&J? Eh.
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Q&A with Josh Lanyon
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*g* Now, that would explain a lot!
Hamlet and Ophelia make my angry, each and every time I see it or read it, unfallible. I mean, come on, what is it with them? (not as a couple but as a person, and don't get me wrong, I love the play!)
btw: Do you remember where Hamlet and the guys attended university?