No Fear Shakespeare

Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about reading SparkNotes for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream? If not, click here.

Last night was the fifth anniversary party of Books & Beer Club. I've only been a member for the past two years, but the club has been in existence a few years longer than that.

I've mentioned before that this book club has a genre a month. It makes for slightly easier picking for our monthly books. Our fearless leader, Wendy, suggested A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare for comedy month. Comedy night? I wasn't really sure that Shakespearean comedy would equate to modern comedy. Even after reading the SparkNotes a few weeks ago, I wondered about how funny this play would be. Boy, was I wrong. 

Wendy had another great idea. Instead of reading the play on our own, wouldn't it be fun to act it out at our meeting? Talk about fun. We had a blast! 

Before settling down to drink our first beers, each one of us pulled the name of a character out of a bucket. I grabbed the character, Hermia, one of the larger parts in the play. Ironically enough, the next two people to grab characters out of the bucket picked the character that was my father and the character that was my boyfriend.

We sat down around a table full of tasty treats. We highlighted our parts in the scripts that were distributed. (I know I wasn't alone to be completely relieved to see that we were reading the "No Fear Shakespeare" - another SparkNotes product - version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. No need to get bogged down in Shakespearean English.) We were reminded to read our parts with inflection, to make our characters believable.

Everyone did an awesome job. And I realized that this was really and truly funny. In every sense of the word. Who knew?

Less than half way through our reading, the skies opened up and the canvas roof of the beer garden where we meet started to leak. But did that stop us? Nope. We just read louder so we could be heard over the rain.

There was a rousing round of applause as we finished our reading. What a fun night. If your book club is ever looking to do something a little different, something fun, try reading a play instead of discussing one!

Happy Anniversary, Books & Beer Club!

I love to read but...

I love to read but...

... at least for the short-term, I think I liked going for a sunrise walk better.

We had a long weekend away at the beach this past weekend. I brought along the SparkNotes for Midsummer Night's Dream. (Yes, the one by William Shakespeare - and don't judge me because I only read the SparkNotes. I'll explain that in a post in another two weeks.) And I brought my iPad where I've got When We Were Sisters by Emilie Richards downloaded. I figured I'd read ...Sisters before shutting off the light at night and I'd read SparkNotes while on the beach. It didn't quite work out that way.

I read a little of ...Sisters on the first night. Then woke up early the following morning to see the sunrising over the Atlantic Ocean. Sitting on the beach in the afternoon, I managed to finish the SparkNotes. (I'm now all set for the Books and Beer Club Anniversary Party two weeks from tonight.)

On less than 6 hours of sleep... and lots of time spent on the beach and the heat and walking over 6 miles, when bedtime rolled around I... well, I went to sleep! The following morning I was up again before sunset, this time to take a 3-mile walk on the beach. After a full day of sightseeing, in the heat, bedtime rolled around and once again, I couldn't keep my eyes open to read. This happened again on day 3 and day 4. The night we arrived home, I was so tired from so many short nights of sleep that I once again was too exhausted to read. Last night was the first night I read in bed for five days. I think that might be a record!

What would you have done in my place?