My summer reading list.

(Spoiler alert: it's Shakespeare.)

It's cute and trendy for bloggers to share what their summer reading lists are, so I thought I'd get specific about mine.

For the rest of June (that's my calendar up there, because I love that kind of stuff), I'm working on Henry IV parts one and two and Henry V. It is very possible I will take a break from the histories around solstice to read A Midsummer's Night Dream.

July will be all about Henry VI (there are three parts to this play - never let it be said that Shakespeare ACTUALLY believed that brevity is the soul of wit). There's one English history play after that, Richard III, and then I'm out of the woods... until Henry VIII. Not sure when I'll read that.

Originally I intended to read all of the tragedies next because of some random internet-advice I got, but I'm thinking of breaking things up. In August, I intend to jump into Shakespeare's life in the year 1599 with this biography*, and read the plays written that year (according to the author): Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. (Henry V was apparently also written about then, but I'll have already read it.) And hey, if I have a good time with that, I may follow up with this biography by the same author in September and read King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.

The above is to be crammed around road trips and moving house (hopefully), birthdays and weddings, grocery store trips and live performances. I do have more time than the average person to devote to this project, but I have faith busier people could get it done.

(For those about to Bard, I salute you.)

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