Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You could write the formula for all the future

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

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CBR 17 BINGO: Play (because you know, theater) My freshman year literature professor told me that you should always read a Shakespeare play through twice to really get to the heart of it. I think that’s a good rule of thumb for any worthwhile literature, and I often think about doing so, except there are too many books in the world to read and right now I’m under time constraints with CBR BINGO. But if I were going to follow her amended advice, Arcadia would […]

Gosh how zany – The mute secretary is also a stripper(! lolol)

Jumpers by Tom Stoppard

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I picked this up from a library book sale. Jumpers is the first play Tom Stoppard put out after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and even though the persnickety toffs of Concord MA apparently didn’t check it out very often, I thought it showed some promise. The back cover copy is of the “can you believe how wacky” genre, like, “British astronauts are scrapping with each other on the moon, and spritely academics steal about London by night indulging in murderous gymnastics!” If you are […]

It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

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This is a play by Tom Stoppard, best known for The Real Inspector Hound and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This takes place on an English estate in the early 1800s during a tutoring session initially between a girl in her teens and her young, educated tutor. We learn that Lord Byron is also going to be here this weekend and the scholar clearly feels somewhat intimidated and annoyed by this news.. As the scene ends and the next scene begins, we are told by the […]

This might be too smart for me.

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I am honestly not entirely sure what I thought of this? (NB: I only read The Real Inspector Hound, not any of the other plays.) On the one hand, it was a fun little one act play that took me around twenty minutes to read, and it made me laugh, and it made me go, what the hell? On the other hand, I’m 100% positive I missed things, and the cleverness of this play almost entirely went over my head. All I could think of to […]

Will the Real Inspector Hound please stand up?

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When faintingviolet told me that the next book club topic was going to be plays, I immediately thought of The Real Inspector Hound.  I had never read it, but I had seen it performed in college, and it was by far one of the better plays I had seen.  I remembered that it was funny and entertaining, and on the lighter side as well.  (And luckily for people who are not all that terribly fond of reading plays, on the short side!)  So, if you […]

The Real in the Title Means Nothing

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I always get a smidge nervous reviewing short works and book club choices. This one is both. Exciting times friends! My immediate takeaway when I finished was that it may be too absurdist for me. But that doesn’t quite grasp the idea I was after. From my limited experience with Stoppard, he is always playing with words, playing with meaning, playing with intent, and has no problem (perhaps prefers) to have his characters speaking at cross purposes. What that does to a reader is leave […]



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