Michael Cunningham is an exquisite writer, one of my favourites, but I’m struggling with The Snow Queen for some reason. Granted, I’ve only just started, but my interest hasn’t quite been captured yet. Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen is a fascinating profile of the Archibald-winning artist, although I finished feeling disappointed. It was quite short and I felt lacked biographical and personal insight (and those we do get, particularly towards the end, are welcomed) and I was wanting to learn more about Cullen’s artistic process; the hows.
I thought it was time to be more proactive with a few of my ‘living list’ goals that were – relatively – easy and well within reach of attaining. And so I pulled out my ancient, faithful and well-used complete works of Shakespeare. Here it is.
I then wondered: what’s the best way to do this? Do I read in order, according to the index? Do I read in order from least to most appealing plays? Would that keep me engaged? Do I re-read the plays I’ve already either studied or read for fun? That would automatically discount about a dozen.
In the end, I took to Wikipedia and made notes, as you’ll see below. I decided to read the plays in chronological order, i.e according to when they were written. For example, The Two Gentlemen of Verona will be first up.
What are you reading this month?
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