Duck and Cover

Who?

Who?

I finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, it was pretty cool but had some slow parts in the middle.

Anyone have any recommendations for me? I might just take a break from reading but I'm not sure.

Heroes Die, by Matthew Stover. It will knock your socks off.

Poop: Read Armor by John Steakley. Go dig up some reviews or something

Read Shakespeare, you'll be an English language tough guy.

I never digged the old-fashioned language thingy. But beyond that there are also other reasons why I don't like his work. Although that comedy of his, Taming of the Shrew, was kinda hilarious, I don't like most of his "serious" work, like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. McBeth was sort of cool. Being dark, mad, gothic and all.

But I really don't understand someone who really, really fancies reading Shakespeare. It's a pain in the ass, at least for me.

Most (if not all?) are plays after all, meant to be seen on stage (or film?), not read like a script.

You're right, reading Shakespeare doesn't give you the proper effect. It's a play, it has to be seen to be properly enjoyed. Still, Shakespeare did have a lot of interesting things to say on a lot of issues and his mastery of the language was remarkable.

Yah, perhaps. I just don't have the patience or wit to really get the point.

Spazmo wrote:You're right, reading Shakespeare doesn't give you the proper effect. It's a play, it has to be seen to be properly enjoyed. Still, Shakespeare did have a lot of interesting things to say on a lot of issues and his mastery of the language was remarkable.

It's well known that Shakespeare did write his plays to be watched. It was either Christopher Marlowe or Ben Johnson that purposely wrote his plays to be read and published. Because of the style of language used, I find watching a Shakespeare's play then reading it is the best way to fully understand what William was writing about.

By the way, they say that Shakespeare created about 8.5% of his own vocabulary, so I guess that's pretty damn impressive.

YOU DONT KNOW SHAKESPEARE UNLESS YOUVE READ IT IN KLINGON. QIPLACK. And Shakespeare is overrated, especially that piece of shit Romero & Juliet.

Created? Vocabulary?

It's a confusing idea, really. On the other hand it sounds impressive and intelligent, on the other hand it feels like he had run out of words so he had to start making them up to cover the fact that his grasp of English wasn't as great as people thought it was?

Bleh, enough with the conspiracy theories. Shakespeare didn't even come up with most of his stories by himself. Like Romeo and Juliet, for example, there's a reason it's set in Verona - it's an old Italian legend, folklore, a fairy tale, whatever. Along the time Shakespeare heard about it it was something like 200 years old and William boy decided to make a play out of it. So. Like anyone cares, just thought I'd share it with you.

That's how most plays were back then. Also, if a playwright came up with an original idea, his contemporaries would steal it and try to improve it. It was kind of like the east coast/west coast rap fued, except with long-ass plays.

Shakespeare's plots seem stale and overdone to us because so much of anglophone fiction's plots are taken from Shakespeare.

Yup, people pillage his work all the time when they are short of ideas.

You can see his skill develop as a writer over time if you look at his early works and then compare it to his later ones.

Aye, could be. I'm no expert on this, have only seen a few and read even fewer of his works, so I can't really say much.

Modernized versions of Romeo and Juliet really piss me off.

Didn't the 1960s version of R&J have borderline child porn?

Indeed it did. It wasn't modernized, though. I'm talking more about hip-hop versions of Romeo and Juliet.

Child porn, the sixties and Shakespeare. What a wonderful world.

@atoga: There was the modern version with DiCaprio in it, I guess that one was part of the hated? I've seen versions of Shakespeare plays done all on rollerskates and with uzis too.

Well, originally Juliet was something like 13 and Romeo was 17-19 ?
Child porn Shakespeare, here I come!