Finished: Henry VI Part II (Shakespeare). More great words by the bard. I'm so glad I decided to finish reading these particular plays in Shakespeare's histories! Though the characters can be confusing, I just keep my little cheat sheet open and then I know who he's talking about when he calls characters by titles instead of names. In this book, York and Warwick declare war on King Henry because York believes he is the rightful heir to the throne. York's three sons, Edward, George and Richard come into prominence in part III of Henry VI, when Edward becomes the next king. There is alot of seemingly quick beheading in this book, but I guess that's just the way it was back then. And, there's a huge tangent where a rebel, Cade, tries to raise troops to go against the realm and declare himself king. One of the reputed best lines of the play comes from that section, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". However, I don't like that line since my son's dear friend Zach just finished the bar and became a lawyer. :-)  In correlation with reading the histories, I've been reading The White Queen, which I'm almost finished with, so I am about saturated with the sons of King Edward III, their progeny, their battles for the crown, white and red roses, the greed and ambition that apparently trumps brotherly love, etc.. I've truly enjoyed it though...and am heartbroken only by the horrific fate that the two young princes in the tower met at the hands of their "protectors". I think I may tackle Henry VIII next after a small trip out of town.

Finished: Henry VI Part I (Shakespeare) I'm really enjoying reading these Shakespeare histories! Of course, I had to draw myself a little genealogy chart to keep track of who begot who, who succeeded who, etcetera, etcetera. :-) In Henry VI Part I, the play opens with the death of Henry V and all the kinsmen descend to begin fighting over who will be the prominent regent in the baby King Henry VI's rule. The war continues between England and France, and somewhere along the line, suddenly Henry VI is a youth who is now ruling. I guess the years pass. :-) Anyway, the most moving part of the play to me is when the previously undefeated warrior, Talbot of England, is left to battle his last battle with France with his own son by his side. The exchanges between them are heartbreaking, as Talbot wants his young son to flee home, but his son refuses to besmirch the family name, and his father's great warrior name, by leaving the battle like a coward. So, die together they do. Sigh. Meanwhile, a war of roses is brewing between Richard of York (who has claims to the throne through his father Edmund of Langley, King Edward III's 5th son) and the Duke of Somerset (a Beaufort who has claims to the thrown through his father John of Gaunt, King Edward III's 3rd son). I believe that sets the scene for Parts II and III to come. At the end of the book, La Pole, the Earl of Suffolk, convinces Henry that he should marry Margaret of Anjou, the young princess of France, to unite the countries. This coincides with the church of England declaring that the war should cease and the King of France should be a Viceroy under Henry as King of both England and France. We'll see how that holds up. :-)

Finished: Henry V (Shakespeare) "But we in it shall be remembered---We few, we happy, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother." King Henry V speaking to his much outnumbered army as he encourages them to face the mighty French army in yet another great Shakespeare play. I had no idea that the Band of Brothers term came from Shakespeare, but why am I surprised? :-) I mostly enjoyed this play during all the scenes where Henry, the grownup Harry/Hal from Henry IV, was spurring his army on to have courage...and when he wandered among his men in disguise to see what their true feelings were. In this play, King Henry continues the battle with France, which he thinks he's the rightful heir to. The French King is incredulous that Henry feels like he'll have success against his huge forces, and constantly sends a messenger to Henry asking him for concession terms. However, Henry always sends back the same message, that he will die rather than concede. With greatly diminished troops, Henry does win...overwhelmingly in fact, and it is then King Charles of France who is asking for terms when all is said and done...including offering his daughter, Catherine, to be Henry's wife and unite the two countries in peace. Truly another joy to read! One of my favorite scenes was earlier in the battle when King Henry was first rallying his troops in spirit and courage:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility.
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon. Let the brow o'erwhelm
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war proof!....

I could keep going, but I think that is the gist of it. :-) Onward to Henry VI, Part I!

Finished: Henry IV Part II (Shakespeare) "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"..."Wake not a sleeping wolf"...."Thy wish was father to that thought". Just a smattering of Shakespeare's sweet words in Henry IV, Part II. Oh how I've missed reading Shakespeare. I left off with Henry IV, Part I, skipped over the middle, and read Richard III next. I've finally decided I need to read everything in between, which includes Henry IV, V and VI. In the meantime, I will make The White Queen my treadmill book to read at the gym in the mornings. I just can't give Shakespeare the respect he deserves by reading him at the gym, lol. Anyway, this will be neat because we watched the series The White Queen, and it deals with Edward, who usurped King Henry VI, and Edward's love, Elizabeth Woodville (the white queen.) It all ties in! :-) Having dived back in, I must say I truly enjoyed Henry IV, Part II...mostly because I like the way Prince Harry (soon to be Henry V) completely changes, gives up his partying ways, mourns his father's death, and accepts the crown as his sovereign responsibility when the king, his father, dies. I didn't enjoy the Falstaff scenes so much...but was so glad when Harry denounced him and his vile ways after his coronation. Also, I think my favorite passages were the deathbed scenes between the king and Harry. Sigh...and so my mini-marathon of Shakespeare's kings begins. :-)

Finished: Dead Souls (Gogol) What is supposed to be a brilliant, funny piece of Russian literature, satirizing the Russian way of life from the government, to the nobility, to the peasants, just seems kind of like the average, preachy-tangent-going piece of Russian literature to me. I'm not meaning to knock any of the Russian literature I've read, or this book in particular, but I think I'm finally understanding that maybe "you just had to be there" to really get the intricacies of much of the humor of Russian literature. The premise is rather unique. The main character, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, is a man of about middle class stature, yet born of some nobility. He lives the high life and wants to continue living the high life, but doesn't want to at all work for it. He loves the money he has accumulated and comes up with a plan to take his two servants and drive around through unknown country towns getting to know and basically schmoozing the rich landowners and political figures of the towns. Then, he swoops down on these newly acquainted landowners and convinces them to sell him their dead souls. Dead souls are the peasants that they have working for them who have passed away, but are still on their books because peasants remained on the books, with taxes to be paid on them, until the next governmental census was taken. In other words, a peasant could die the year after the census was taken, but remain a live person to the government in terms of taxes, etc., for ten more years! So, Pavel Ivanovich decides he will buy up as many dead souls as he can from as many unsuspecting landowners, and when he's got enough, he will mortgage them to the government (because that was allowed), and then run off with the money! Before he can buy up too many souls, the landowners start comparing notes. The towns get up in arms thinking that Chichikov is some grand swindler, maybe even a wanted outlaw, and he leaves town in the middle of the night with his money and deeds to the dead souls in tact. All the while, Gogol describes in great detail the lives of all the various levels of people involved, and assigns certain characteristics to them that I suppose were meant to really be scathing towards certain Russian people. The next time we catch up with Chichikov, he's moved on to another town and some other rich landowners. This time he's more into seeing how they run their estates and earn money on them. He'd love for a rich estate to just fall into his lap. This is where a chapter or two are missing from the actual manuscript of the book, so there are some big holes. As it turns out, though, Chichikov somehow forges the will for a deceased rich lady in favor of himself. He ends up being thrown into a jail cell by the prince, but there are so many unscrupulous government officials around that they actually come to HIM, willing to release him and let him go for payment. The book ends in the middle of a sentence with the prince admonishing all the government people who work for him. It was a book that started off with promise for me. I wanted to see if Pavel Ivanovich got away with his scheme...but then it deteriorated into the author's statement about Russia in the second half. Oh well! Each book I read is still worth the read. :-) (ok, except for Finnegan's Wake. I will never say that about Finnegan's Wake!)

Finished: We Were Liars (Lockhart) Eh, an ok young adultish book about three privileged cousins and a best friend who spend all their summers together on the family island until one summer things go terribly wrong. A bit predictable, but still nicely page-turning....just what I needed while doing my treadmill walking. I was able to figure out what happened to one of the cousins, Johnny, when two years later his mother wandered the island wearing one of his old shirts. Even though Johnny showed up to the narrator, Cadence, along with their other cousin Mirren, and friend Gat...it was pretty clear to me that perhaps Johnny was a figment of Cadi's imagination. I didn't bank on Mirren and Gat also being figments, but I wasn't surprised. Anyway....just a so-so book. :-) Onwards and upwards!

Finished: Disgraced (Akhtar). Pulitzer-prize winning play that rips right into that oft avoided topic at dinner parties...religion. Manhattan attorney, Amir Kapoor, and his white wife, Emily, have her art dealer friend, a Jewish man, and his wife, an African American woman, over for dinner. We've already seen when we first meet Amir that he's anxious about becoming the next partner in his law firm and being American born, but with parents from Pakistan, he's worked his butt off to make a name for himself, all the while distancing himself from any Muslim roots whatsoever. His wife, on the other hand, is an artist who paints with an intense Islamic theme in her head and heart. Amir is going along pretty well until his nephew comes and begs Amir to show up at the hearing for a local imam from his mosque. The imam has been arrested on trumped up potential terrorist money-raising charges. When Amir shows up at the hearing, not to represent, but to support, the NY Times quotes him and implies that his firm is defending the imam. This does not sit well with Amir's Jewish law firm partners. On the day of the dinner party, Amir has already had a tense meeting with one of the partners, who didn't know that he'd changed his name from his parents...and...who didn't know that Amir's parents were Pakastani, since Amir had put Indian on his application. He's arguing with his wife, who he felt pushed him to go and support his nephew's imam...and the dinner guests show up early. As it turns out, Jory, the wife of the art dealer, is also a partner at the law firm with Amir and unbeknownst to Amir, she has been offered a partnership that should have rightfully gone to Amir. Also, unbeknownst to Amir or Jory...Emily and Isaac, the art dealer, had a one night stand after one of her art shows in London. As the foursome settles down for dinner and the drinks flow, religious talk ensues and things get very dicey between all four. All kinds of intense anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and even an anti-African American is thrown in to the conversation. I think there are definitely words said that would make most play-goers squirm in their seats. For instance, as much as Amir has distanced himself from his culture, and doesn't approve of the restrictions of the Koran on "his people", he said he couldn't help but have a smidgen of "we won" pride when 911 happened. Needless to say, his wife, Isaac and Jory are appalled. Amir tries to say to Isaac, come on...are you telling me that you don't get the least amount of pride when Israel bombs someone? Anyway...things go downhill from there. When Amir leaves to clear his head and pick up something else for the party, Jory goes with him and intends to tell him about her partnership offer. When they leave, Isaac, who has never been able to stand Amir, puts the moves on Emily and tries to kiss her, but she pulls away from him...but not before Jory comes bursting back through the door because her talk with Amir didn't go well, and sees them. It's a huge mess. Jory and Isaac leave, and Emily confesses to Amir that she did, a long time ago, have the one night stand with Isaac. Amir once again goes back to something they were talking about that night, something that Amir has worked hard to distance himself from...how the women in the Muslim religion must submit to the men or be beaten and/or killed. He gets volatile and severely hits Emily three times. In the last act of the play, Amir is alone in the apartment packing up their belongings. Emily comes in, but it's clear that she's leaving him. Also clear is that he's lost his job. What a nightmare, an intense one...and what a scary thought that scenes like this could really be playing out today.

Finished: 11/22/63 (King). "The past is obdurate..." Awesome book about a high school English teacher in 2011 who travels back in time to try and stop the assassination of JFK! Jake Epping is shown a time traveling portal by his friend and diner owner, Al. Al is dying of cancer and needs to pass the secret on to someone he trusts to use it wisely. Going through the portal always takes Jake (and Al before him) to September of 1958. Al's goal had been to go back in time, live the necessary 5 years back "then" until 1963, and then stop the assassination of President Kennedy. He discovered his cancer, though, and realized he wouldn't live long enough to get the job done. Even though he spent a few years in the past, every time he comes back through the portal to 2011, it's only been 2 minutes in 2011 time. So...Al wants the younger, healthier Jake to go back and do the job himself. It's complicated, though, because he needs for Jake to be sure that Oswald acted alone and that it wasn't a conspiracy. In other words, it's more complicated than just going back in time, killing Oswald, and then stepping back into 2011. Jake has another mission on his mind to test out the theory of stopping a tragedy. Harry Denning, the janitor at his school, has written a night-school English essay about the horrific Halloween night of 1958 when his drunken father killed his mother and siblings right in front of his eyes with a sledgehammer. Jake means to go back and stop that from happening as a test to see if he can stop a major event. The book is so well written that it just keeps you turning pages. Of course, the book's catch phrase..."The past is obdurate"...becomes critical as the past itself becomes a character that tries to stop Jake at every turn from being successful in changing it. Jake manages to stop the murder of Harry's family, only to come back to 2011 and find out that, not only is Harry not the janitor at the high school...but he was killed in Vietnam at the age of 19. So....what impact did saving his family, but killing his drunken father have on Harry? Was Harry better off? The other kicker is that when Jake travels back through the portal to 1958 to live for five years and then prevent JFK's assassination, everything he did the first time he traveled back is reset. He's got to go and murder Harry's father all over again before he can set off for Texas. Jake and Al have discussed the ramifications of JFK not dying, and they think that one of them would be the non-escalation of the Vietnam War, and therefore, Jake hopes, the non-death of Harry in Vietnam...along with thousands of other lives saved. While living in a small town outside of Dallas in 1958 Jake falls in love with the librarian at his school, Sadie. Jake's relationship with Sadie complicates things...along with how close he grows to the seniors he teaches and the other teachers and administrators. On the sly, every so often Jake slips into a seedy apartment he's rented in Fort Worth and keeps tabs on the despicable Lee Oswald and his beautiful, abused wife and their baby daughter. To help fund his investigation, Jake also places a few bets with bookies on sporting events that he obviously knows the outcome of, and gets himself in trouble with some seedy characters. In the end, Jake does succeed in preventing Oswald from killing JFK, but loses Sadie to a bullet in the process. Though he's a hero, when he goes back to 2011, he goes back to a world that has completely changed and which has been marred by nuclear war. The major non-assassination change in history has had a huge "butterfly effect" and the world is no longer the same place he knew. It is many times worse worldwide than things were in 2011. Jake figures if he goes back through the portal one more time, he can reset all that by not saving JFK. It would also mean that Sadie would be alive in the past. Jake wants badly to just go and meet Sadie and not do any of the other heroic things so there won't be a huge affect, but he realizes that even that small change in history would have an affect somewhere. He goes back in time to write the book we are reading, and then he goes back to 2011, where things are back to normal. He uses the Internet to find out that Sadie is, in fact, still alive and is 80 years old living in the same small town. He is now 41 (because even though it's only been 6 minutes in 2011, Jake's body aged the amount of years he spent in the past). Jake packs his bags, heads to Texas, and approaches Sadie for a dance. She feels like she knows him from somewhere. He's just happy being with her even if she'll never remember their love. At over 800 pages, there is obviously alot of detail I"m leaving out...but what a great, great read...especially for those long travel days I just had! :-)

Finished: Clybourne Park (Norris). Pulitzer Prize winning and Tony Award winning play about two different groups of people who interact in the same house fifty years apart. Act One takes place in 1959 and centers around a 40ish white couple who lost their son in the Korean War and is selling their house in their white neighborhood to move to another job. The couple has an African American maid whose husband comes to pick her up right when neighbors/friends have descended upon the selling couple to let them know that :::gasp::: a black family has bought their house and that simply will not do. All manner of fast-paced conversation takes place between the seven characters with nothing resolved for sure except the couple is moving and the house has been sold. Act Two takes place fifty years later in the same house and this time black and white neighbors have gathered (played by the same actors in different roles) to discuss the proposed teardown of the house and look at the neighborhood bylaws in regards to the gaudy plans that one white couple has for building a huge new house there. We find out the female half of the black couple present is related to the people who bought the house fifty years ago and feels like the house should be keep intact for historical significance. Much banter ensues, polite at first but with racial undertones, with one white guy being the obnoxious "black joke" telling guy. Things deteriorate and there's never really any resolution. The play is just a smartly written, fast-paced, true to every day conversation, racially contemplative gem. I would love to have seen it on the stage! It also just so happens to be written by a high school mate of my brother's who shared the stage with him in a few productions at our dear old Alma Mater in Houston. :-)

Finished: American Pastoral (Roth). A very good book spanning the 1930's to the 1990's, a Pulitzer Prize winner, about an innately good man...really, almost a man too good to be true, who marries the outwardly just as beautiful Miss New Jersey, and together they produce a child who grows up to be their antithesis in every way....so anti-Vietnam War and so anti-American that she blows up a post office, killing an innocent person. And thus begins the downward slide of Seymour "the Swede" Levov's once fairytale, or so he thought, life. Swede Levov is a tall, handsome, blond haired, blue eyed Jewish boy...a rarity in his community in Newark, New Jersey, who is so athletically talented that he's considered the star of the town for many years. As humble and good as he is talented, all Swede wants is to be happy, raise a family, love his country, thrive in America, etc. He's the son of a Jewish ladies glove maker who took over the family company from his own father. Even though Swede is drafted to play baseball out of high school, he instead decides to learn the glove making business from his father from the ground up so he can take over some day. He works hard and eventually does just that, thriving in the business and moving his wife and baby to the country. His polar opposite, annoying, bratty younger brother goes off and becomes the heart surgeon of the family, while the Swede lives his American dream married to Dawn. In constant, near stream of conscious writing we go back with the Swede to relive his early, happy years as a husband and father...and then onto the heartbreaking years where his daughter, and only child, Merry begins stuttering and spends her adolescence tortured by the stuttering. At age 11 Merry witnesses a monk on the television news setting himself on fire in protest of the war, and from that moment on, the bright girl is immersed in the world around her and political concerns, etc. She grows into a six foot tall, overweight, stuttering, stringy-haired sixteen year old who her parents can't control. She starts hanging out with some radical activists, and the next think you know, she's bombed the town post office in the early morning hours accidentally killing the town doctor who happened to be there to mail some bills before going on call. She becomes a fugitive from the FBI and is in hiding for five years. Needless to say, Swede and Dawn's lives fall apart. Dawn suffers two suicidal hospital stays, and finally decides to get a face lift and move from their house, basically wiping away all traces of Merry. The Swede stays the course and tries his best to keep everyone else on an even keel, always squashing his feelings down. However, we as the reader get to see many of those feelings and it's so sad. :-( So, after five years, the Swede gets a letter telling him that Merry is hiding out right there in Newark under an assumed name. He goes to see her and is devastated all over again at her condition. She's under 100 pounds and says that she now belongs to the religious group the Jains who believe in non-violence towards all organisms...she won't even bathe for fear of harming another organism. She's living in poverty in a run down, dangerous part of town. He tries to talk sense into her and have her come home to deal with everything. He's certain that she was used by a radical group and that she can get off for being so young when the bombing happened. She explains, don't you see? She went on to set more bombs off in Oregon, killing three more people...she was the one who knew how to make the bombs. It was on her, and she doesn't appear to be remorseful. Oh, and on the run, she had been raped several times. She also tells him that the first few days after the bombing, her speech therapist, who the Levovs trusted as a good friend, hid her out from the law and her parents! It's all just too much for Swede to comprehend. And still, Merry doesn't want anything to do with her parents or their way of life. Basically, it is dawning on Swede that she's mentally crazy. He can't reason with her, so he leaves her there for the time being. He calls his brother who tells him he'll come right now and drag her home for him, but the Swede doesn't want to be violent like that. Trying to figure out what to do, he doesn't tell his wife yet. They are having dinner that night with some friends, which happen to include the speech therapist, and his parents, and he'll figure out what to do. During the course of the dinner, he privately confronts the speech therapist and he inadvertently discovers that his wife is having an affair with their "friend" the architect of their new house. The Swede appears to be realizing that the final threads of his world are coming unraveled. The book doesn't really end with any resolution except that it sounds as if Swede is going to turn his daughter into the police before his brother or the speech therapist can (though they never indicate they are going to do that.) It is a sad, spiraling tale...told by a writer who was best friend's with the infamous Swede's younger brother...and told after finding out that the Swede had died of cancer after remarrying and having three sons, but never ridding himself of the guilt he felt that somehow Merry's actions were all his fault...the good man, the outwardly untouchable Swede. Dang...now I have to adjust my Top 100 because this definitely deserves to be on that list!