The main rules of the challenge were:
1. Read two plays per month so as to have a life.
2. Poems and sonnets to be read at leisure.
3. Read the play before seeing a production.
4. Histories to be read in chronological order.
5. The order of the plays depended on category with no two same categories next to one another in order for balance. Example: history, tragedy, comedy, history, comedy, tragedy but NOT history, tragedy, tragedy, comedy, as that could get too depressing. (Given the severity of the histories, I set up the list such that there was a comedy and tragedy between them.)
Once all the plays were read then one could do the more competitive versions of "The Game of Shakespeare", which is much more fun if you actually know the less popular plays and actually like Shakespeare (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3606/the-game-of-shakespeare). ...But I digress. So here is the list with dates of completion and italics for histories.
The Playbill
King John (14 Jan 2010) Trolius and Cressida (24 Jan) Coriolanus (16 Feb) Richard II (22 Feb) Two Gentlemen of Verona (06 Mar) Two Noble Kinsmen (not found in my collection) Henry IV, Part I (19 Apr) Measure for Measure (17 May) Titus Andronicus (11 Jul) Henry IV, Part II (20 Jul) All's Well That Ends Well (29 Jul) Pericles (08 Feb 2011) Henry V (12 Apr 2011) As You Like It Tempest Henry VI, Part I Anthony and Cleopatra Love's Labor's Lost Henry VI, Part II Winter's Tale Henry VI, Part III Cymbeline Timon of Athens Richard III King Lear Merry Wives of Windsor Henry VIII
That makes 14 more plays to get through, so even if I am only able to get to roughly one play per month, I should complete the remainder of the plays by the end of the year.
]]>
In no particular order:
1. The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
2. Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov
3. Pushkin's Children, Tatiyana Tolstaya
4. To Live, Yu Hua
5. Irish Sagas and Folk Tales, Eileen O'Faolain
6. Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family History, Elizabeth Shown Mills
7. Parnassus on Wheels, Christopher Morley
8. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, Yu Hua
9. Finding Your Canadian Ancestors, Irvine & Obee
10. Linear Models with R, Faraway
11. The remaining Shakespeare plays I haven't read
12. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, Elizabeth Beeton
13. Teach Yourself Gaelic circa 1970, Roderick Mackinnon
14. How to take over the world, from the tiny cell you made for yourself with just your laptop and unique personality
15. Cartographies of Disease, Tom Koch
16. Pushkin's House, Andrei Bitrov
17. Frederick Wentworth, Captain
18. Scribblers, Sculptors, and Scribes, Richard LaFeur
19. The Pattern Making Primer
20. Ancestry's Guide to Research: Case Studies in American Genealogy
21. A Garden Herbal, Anthony Gardiner
22. The Fiery Cross, Diana Gabaldon
23.Yo, La Peor, Monica Lavin
24. The Genealogy Handbook, Elien Galford
25. The Auld Scots Dictionary
There, a nice 25 books to start the list with, subject to alterations (including additions) at lister's discretion.
]]>