Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

would have been a nice little jaunt were it not for the casual racism

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

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Looking for a modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew? May I suggest that your eschew this shrew and settle down on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn for another screening of 10 Things I Hate About You instead? 10 Things treats its characters with much more respect- I know- a teen movie from 1999 outranks Pulitzer winner Anne Tyler. I’m sure she’ll get over it. Vinegar Girl is often fun; our Kate spends her days working with preschoolers who are wise beyond their years, and her […]

Oh Margaret. You can do so many things, but rapping is not one of them. (CBR 11 Bingo: Remix)

Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold by Margaret Atwood

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I love a good Shakespearean remix. I devour everything Margaret Atwood has to offer. I was delighted to come across Hag-Seed, as I am still haunted by her addition to the Canongate Myth Series (Penelopiad) 14 years after reading. Atwood sets her storm in the “summer-stock” theater world of world of far flung Canada. Our Prospero is a wrongfully toppled director of a prestigious theater; toppled by schemes, toppled by loss, and toppled by grief. His island takes the form of a prison, where he rises once […]

Prospero Atwood

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

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Oh my god.  How was this THIS good? This book shouldn’t have been this good.  The premise sounds insane. A retelling of The Tempest where our Prospero is an exiled theater director setting his own (previously thwarted) adaptation of The Tempest in a corrections facility.  It’s the definition of Should Not Work. Not only does it, it’s one of her best. Atwood intelligently uses meta text throughout the book, which made this (more than the other Hogarth Shakespeare I’ve read so far) feel more like […]

I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

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I am a sucker for a good modern retelling of a classic tale; I was an impressionable teenager in the era of Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet, and the innumerable “what if Shakespeare … but in high school!” movies that were an exercise in diminishing returns. With, of course, the exception of Ten Things I Hate About You. Sure, the poem that inspires the title is hokey as shit for a girl who’s as pretentious as Kat is, and it is SO VERY teen movie […]

Pain could be measured, whereas love often couldn’t even be located.

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This book is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. I previously reviewed Chevalier’s New Boy from the series. It was a FANTASTIC take on Othello. A year or so ago, I read Atwood’s spin on the Tempest ,  Hag-Seed, but didn’t really care for it.  Dunbar is St. Aubyn’s retelling of King Lear and I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it. My general reaction to most of it was… “What just happened?!” St. Aubyn focuses pretty much exclusively on the dysfunctional family theme here. Henry Dunbar is an 80-year-old  billionaire business mogul who hasn’t exactly […]

There was no choice, really. Is there ever between the darkness and the light? You walk toward the smile rather than the frown.

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This book is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. I read Margaret Atwood’s book in the series, Hag-Seed, a year or so ago but wasn’t crazy about her play within a play retelling of the Tempest. I’m reading Edward St. Aubyn’s contribution to the series now, Dunbar, and not quite sure yet how I feel about his version of Lear. This re-imagined Othello set on the playground of my youth, however, is fantastic.  I was immediately drawn to the echoes of that time: monkey bars, playing jacks, jump rope rhymes and […]



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