The Shakespeare Reading Challenge

After one friend's successful undertaking to read one book a month last year, I was inspired to do the same.

To add another twist, I decided to take up the Shakespeare Reading Challenge -- the easiest level, Puck, is to read four plays this year. Something that I can very easily do. I've always wanted to read Shakespeare's plays, but I never got to take a Shakespeare survey course in college.

Here's Puck. He's ugly, as befits a trickster. But I'm sure that he can change his form at will.



So I got a list of Shakespeare plays to read from an online penpal, who's teaching Shakespeare to Korean students.

I hereby commit to reading the following plays, in no particular order:

1. Twelfth Night
2. King Lear
3. The Tempest
4. Measure for Measure

My online pal advises watching each play before I read it, which I think is a good idea. As he points out, plays are meant to be watched, not read. He also recommends buying good annotated versions of each play so that I can actually understand what they're talking about.

Any recommendations?

On another note, I didn't update this blog at all last year but I did manage to make some headway on a novel before ultimately deciding to abandon it. I also finished a short story a couple of days ago.

I realized that I write better offline, so I probably won't be updating this blog as much except to keep track of how I'm doing with the Shakespeare Reading challenge and other various New Year's resolutions.

Here we go!