yo ho ho

it's almost summer which means summer reading lists and for me that means: adventure books. treasure island, the adventures of tom sawyer and huckleberry finn, gullivers travels, around the world in 80 days. adventure novels are my favorite, they always have been since i was a kid and would read mark twain in my barefeet and wish i was tom sawyer (NOT becky). they also remind me of the adventure book in the movie the pagemaster. have any of you seen this film? its an animated movie from the 90s starring macauley culkin who gets trapped inside an animated book world when he visits a mysterious library. it wasn't very popular and a little bizarre but it was one of the movies my grandma bought us so we watched it. she also bought us a non-disney version of aladdin because she got confused. hmm.

for my summer:

-captains courageous, rudyard kipling

-robinson crusoe, daniel defoe

-moby dick, herman melville

-heart of darkness, joseph conrad

-o pioneers!, willa cather

-the swiss family robinson, johann david wyss

what's on your summer reading list?

if you like to read

but you haven't read any plays, i recommend you do. for the non-theatre artist i believe they can remain quite an untapped avenue of literature that many readers never get to. and you're missing out on so much. here are my favorites:

-a streetcar named desire, tennessee williams

-the glass menagerie, tennessee williams

-27 wagons full of cotton & other plays, tennessee williams

-waiting for godot, samuel beckett

-the caucasian chalk circle, bertolt brecht

-death of a salesman, arthur miller

-master harold and the boys, athol fugard

-a doll's house, henrik ibsen

-medea, euripides

-lysistrata, aristophanes

-miss julie, august strindberg

-the heidi chronicles, wendy wasserstein

-oleanna, david mamet

-the hairy ape, eugene o'neill

-dinner with friends, donald margulies

number one: if it's by tennessee williams you can bet i already love it. i love everything by tennessee williams. number two: this is by no means an exhaustive list. i could go on and on. number three: keep an open mind, reading plays is much different than reading novels. number four: try to do a rapid bit of research about the play and the time it was written before you read it. many of these plays, while they seem dry now, were extremely revolutionary and racy for their time. this kind of thing is quite important to know.

currently recommending