Sunday, May 2, 2010

Sunday Salon: Blogging from the final frontier

The Sunday Salon.com I'm sitting here watching the 2009 Star Trek dvd with my husband and the whole time travel thing is making my head spin, so I thought to myself: I know! I'll blog! That should help.

Here's what I'm reading this week:

Inspired by my recent reading of The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet, I decided to pick up another retelling of Hamlet from my shelf of library books, Something Rotten by Alan Grantz. Though it takes place in contemporary times, this is actually a much closer reading of Hamlet's story than The Lunatic is. I've even pulled our big old volume of Shakespeare's work off the shelf--the one my husband accidentally borrowed permanently from his first college roommate (thanks, Michael, wherever you are)--to cross check some of the dialogue. Such fun!



The Red Thread currently lives in the bag that comes along in the car when I'm playing taxi driver and tour guide through life for my boys. It's a novel centered around a group of potential parents in the process of adopting from China.

I expected this to be a memoir for some reason, and I've had a hard time readjusting my expectations. It all just seems so . . . fictional. Which is normally a good thing, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to settle in to the book as it is (I'm about halfway through) in time to enjoy the ride.

Now, if you'll excuse me, young Kirk and Spock seem to be about to save the world and become lifelong friends. I think I'd better pay attention.

10 comments:

  1. Happy Star Trek watching!! I can't get into that show, I just don't think my brain is big enough!!

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  2. I thought The Red Thread was a memoir too. I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

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  3. I adore the Star Trek time travel stuff!

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  4. Elise, this was the movie that's a prequel to the show, so it was really fun for me to see the young versions of the characters I used to watch in reruns with my college boyfriend. Kind of like a reverse reunion, LOL.

    Kathy, I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought it was going to be a memoir! That's never happened to me before.

    Care, I like it too, but the added complication of it taking place before the show created 30 years ago took place--and yet all still being in the future--and then people from further in the future coming to the past that was always the future but now feels like the past because those characters are all old now--was almost too much for my weary 10:00 p.m. head. ;-)

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  5. Yes, the cover is gorgeous.

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  6. I'm feeling a sudden urge to tell you to Live Long and Prosper. ;-)

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  7. I read (and loved) Something Wicked. (Something Rotten--his retelling of Macbeth using Horatio Wilkes--is really good too.)

    I recently read Ophelia a recently-released YA novel telling the story of Hamlet from Ophelia's POV (I'll have a review up before the end of the week). The author (who's name escapes me right now), has another title called Lady Macbeth's Daughter that's now on my shelf just waiting to be read. (The author of these two has her PhD in literature and had a love of teaching Shakespeare to college students; hence, her retelling to make the plays "accessible," to young readers.)

    I love that stuff.

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  8. I absolutely loved Something Rotten! I am glad you are enjoying it as well.

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  9. I've heard quite a bit about Something Rotten and it sounds really good. I always think Hamlet retellings have such potntial, so many characters we never hear from in detail and such an awful hero. Such a flawed hero that he almost becomes an anti-hero(in my opinion, everyone else seems to love him).

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