January
Shakespeare Month
Our resident Shakespeare enthusiast, has picked out our yearly Shakespeare play (a tragedy since last year we did a comedy). This year we are going to read Othello! I have not read Othello before so I am very excited to get another play under my belt. These Shakespeare months have been some of the best book club discussions to date!
The Play’s the Thing Podcast has finished recording episodes on all of Shakespeare’s plays so there will be a podcast series on this!
I will leave you with . She says I can’t call her a Shakespeare expert, so I will call her my personal (and Book Club’s) Shakespeare guru. Jess is an avid reader and committed book club member. She has read widely in academic, homeschool, and leisure settings. She adds so much thought to my reading life! Here’s what She has to say about this year’s play…
Welcome to Shakespeare month, and prepare to love Othello (the play and the man!). This play centers around Othello, a general who has been successful on the battlefield and who is now entering the domestic sphere of marriage. Some of the themes it explores are: discernment (how does a person decide who to trust); the consequences of intimate, bad counselors; marriage and infidelity; and appearances vs. reality. I hope you enjoy meeting Desdemona, a true heroine. I hope you hate Iago, a true villain. I hope you revel in Shakespeare’s obsession with comparing black and white; and I hope you find within this comparison a complex discussion of race, contradicting appearances, and good & evil.
[A note on watching Othello: as with all plays, it is helpful to watch, but also, as with all plays by deceased playwrights, the new adaptation may or may not fully express the play as you read it. Personally, even the Kenneth Branagh film makes choices which alter some of the depth and meaning I find in the play. So, read first, watch last!]
If you missed December, here it is!
Stay tuned for February and March featuring friend of the Substack and our Long Book (kind of)…
*As always, some of the links are affiliate links. The few cents earned with each purchase you make after clicking links (at no extra cost to you) go toward the time and effort it takes to keep Literature Book Club running and I appreciate it!
 | A guest post by
|