My Next Read

I have spent a lot of my reading time over the last few years perusing a moderately wide selection of young adult fiction.  I have tried to balance these (usually) quick-and-easy reads with other stuff, most recently Sarah Silverman's autobiography, adult historical fiction, sci-fi/fantasy stuff by Orson Scott Card and Connie Willis, and classics by Austen and Bronte.  I've come across some real gems in the last year that I can not believe I hadn't read in my school experience.  Who gets through school without reading Jane Eyre?  Or, worse yet, getting through schooling without even knowing it's an option to read?  I wasn't introduced to anything by Jane Austen until Pride and Prejudice was given to me in 2007.  And I'm convinced the main reason I liked it as much as I did was because I got to read it without distractions or interruptions (while on a trip without young Master Toby).  It's the same thing with my first Hemmingway novel, The Sun Also Rises, which I read while in Spain with BJ in 2004--eight years after high school.  Actually, maybe my teachers just wanted to "branch out" and teach us about non-classic (or not-yet classic) authors and books.

All this to say I'm thinking about picking up some Shakespeare to read sometime in the next few months.  Shakespeare?  Huh??  Scary thought?  Too daunting?  OK, how about some Agatha Christie?  I watched a fantastic documentary (on PBS, of course) about how Christie wrote her novels and whether or not she wrote the same novel 80 times (I think some young adult authors are doing that) or whether she just broke the mystery-writing mold so dramatically that the genre has never been the same since.  You've got to love PBS.  They may just be responsible for the next 80  books...  (Frankly, once I'm through with For Whom the Bell Tolls I'll be happy to read anything else.  But it's not so bad, I guess.... the jury is still out on this one, and I'm only about 80 pages from the end.)