Are you ready for our final book club of the year? Well, ready or not here we go to cap off another year of reading and discussing together! The Real Inspector Hound is a quick, funny play where Tom Stoppard takes aim at theatre, critics, reality, and fate. While its one act zips by in 50 pages or less, it still manages to have opinions about our place in the world around us. Ground rules remain the same as before, discuss in the comments below, […]
Well, I think I’ll go and oil my gun.
Opening salvo, hot take: everything Tom Stoppard has ever written is incredible; this isn’t his best work. The Real Inspector Hound is the first live production of a Stoppard play I ever saw, followed about a year and a half later by Arcadia. So, I will always be grateful to Hound for preparing me, because otherwise Arcadia might have melted my brain, and working directly with Tom (humblebrag) on The Coast of Utopia would have been the actual death of me. Hound is a delight. […]
Discussion Topics: The Real Inspector Hound
It’s time for a trip to the theatre! Have you read The Real Inspector Hound? It’s a quick, light, funny read where Tom Stoppard takes aim at theatre, critics, reality, and fate. All of which we’ll be talking about in our final book club of the year. Are you looking to view a version of the play before discussing? A fellow cannonballer (h/t crystalclear) sent this link along, saying she thought it was the best available. Dig out your theatre best and we’ll reconvene here […]
Book Announcement: #CannonBookClub Reads a Play
To quote a literary legend “The play’s the thing!” and we’ll be reading and discussing Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound on Wednesday December 13, 2017. I have posted Discussion Topics post as a reminder to finish up and food for thought. As in Book Clubs past, feel free to visit us here on the group blog for the dedicated post or in our Facebook Cannonball Read Book Chat group where I’ll have even more topics to discuss. Here’s a synopsis of our choice: The ultimate parody of the stage […]
Is that all they can do–die?
This is a charming and fun play to be sure. Especially, this is fun if you have read or recently re-read Hamlet. What makes it fun in general is the kind of back and forth between formality and informality that the characters go through. The premise of this play is that two relatively, but not entirely, minor characters in Hamlet are waiting in the wings of life for their various moments to show up to be on stage. It’s not that these are the actors […]
They’re Just These Two Guys, You Know?
The Read Harder Challenge this year included a task to read a play. I never really enjoy reading plays, and I have read quite a few over the years. In high school, as an IB kid, I read no less than 10 Shakespeare plays. It was… grueling? It is this particular understanding of myself that made me immediately turn away from the idea of studying to be a dramaturg while my friend Gina was in grad school at Yale. But, I signed up for the […]