33. A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare
Project Gutenberg e-book, 53 pages, 1590-1596

I've always rolled my eyes at people who say they can't enjoy books because school ruined reading for them (I mean, seriously? Just grow up and own the fact that you're functionally illiterate), but it wasn't until I read my first unassigned Shakespeare play that I realized I still have the ghost of my 11th-grade English teacher looking over my shoulder and scolding, "Don't read for plot!!" And I mean, if we're talking about ghosts of teachers past then Mrs. Hillesland is probably better to have around than Mrs. Johnson from the 5th grade making me write "I will not read in class" 100 times and chucking staplers at my head, but this has put me off reading Shakespeare for years--I keep thinking I'll do it when I have time to properly absorb it, whatever that means. Anyway, I've come to realize that reading for plot, if you're not sitting the AP English Literature test, is not a bad thing. It'd be good if you could get some understanding of theme at the same time, and get into some of the wordplay, but there's nothing wrong with getting familiar with our literary heritage, even at a basic level. And besides, if you look at Shakespeare as part of that heritage, the play itself is only the beginning--then there are adaptations, movie versions, and all the other works of art that the plays have inspired. Which is why I decided to read A Midsummer Night's Dream in the first place--as a jumping-off point for reading Chris Adrian's The Great Night, which re-imagines A Midsummer Night's Dream in Buena Vista Park in modern-day San Francisco. I'll admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the play itself, but The Great Night (which I'm currently reading) is fantastic, and more so because I understand the source material.

Next up: The Great Night by Chris Adrian

32. The Blue Castle

The Blue Castle, L.M. Montgomery
Project Gutenberg of Australia e-book, 195 pages, 1926

I kind of hate these covers for L.M. Montgomery's books (the edition of Anne of the Island I read as a kid had a similar one), and because I read it as a Project Gutenberg e-book it doesn't technically have a cover, but I use it anyway to show how fluffy the book was. And yet so good. L.M. Montgomery (in case you don't recognize the name) is the author of the Anne of Green Gables books, which I totally love, I don't care what anyone says. The Blue Castle is one of her only novels written for adults. I actually hated Anne's House of Dreams (one of the later Anne stories where Anne is grown up and married to her childhood sweetheart), and between that and the depressing tone of the first few chapters I thought The Blue Castle would be a disappointment, but I ended up loving it! I thought it would just be a straightforward romance, but most of the book deals with the heroine's rebellion against her stifling family and the social mores of the time. After telling everyone off in a couple of fantastic scenes, she moves out, gets a job as a housekeeper for the town drunk (who turns out to be a pretty good guy), befriends an unwed mother with consumption, and asks a man to marry her (remember, this is rural Canada in 1926). The thing I hated about Anne's House of Dreams is that after all the romantic buildup of the first three novels, once Anne and Gilbert are married they apparently never interact with each other again, because women stay home and have babies while the men go out and work, don't you know. (That, and the story revolves around some "tragic" characters who are everything the first two books poked fun at.) But the relationship between Valancy and Barney is sweet and realistic precisely because it starts out unromantically; they're more like companions than lovers, and because there are no expectations they're free to live the way they want, which involves lots of walks in the forest and hanging out at home (Barney is also a shady character who doesn't seem to have a job of any kind). Of course they really do fall in love in the end and Barney turns out to be a millionaire and everyone lives happily ever after, but it's a really charming story and only a little bit cliche. This really makes me want to read more of L.M. Montgomery's work, particularly the Emily of New Moon series.

Up next: A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare