Hi everybody, It’s April 1 and as I said, no joke, I’m giving away 3 copies of Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadows.  Names were chosen randomly via the guy in the cube next to me who had no idea what he was picking random slips of paper off my desk for.  Winners have been notified, and hopefully will get  back to me soon with their shipping info.  Thanks for playing!  Maybe some nice publisher will send me some more books to give away soon.  Something to think about, you know, for any authors who happen to hang out here who might be working on their next novel.  🙂  I’m just sayin.

http://princehamlet.com/chapter_1.html

I don’ t have much time to get into this at the moment but I didn’t want to forget about the link.  Forget Romeo – how old is Hamlet?  The gravedigger’s scene seems to tell us pretty clearly that he’s about 30.  Does that feel right?  Wasn’t he off at school?  Isn’t he still working out some issues with his relationship to mom?  Doesn’t everything else about the play make him feel younger? The link above comes from the book, Hamlet : The Undiscovered Country, by Steve Roth.  I can’t seem to find any links to the book itself so I’m not sure if it’s already published (perhaps a long time ago), or coming soon.

http://doubtingtommaso.blogspot.com/2008/03/markov-chains.html Since I’m in the middle of David Blixt’s Master of Verona right now, I couldn’t resist posting this story about a programmer who whipped up an algorithm for generating fake, but authentic, Italian last names. 

http://againwiththecomics.blogspot.com/2008/03/herbie-flaming-carrot-and-billy-bob.html I’m not sure I can explain this comic, you really have to see it for yourself.  It’s got lots of Shakespeare, though, and surely qualifies as “geeky”.

So I had an interesting conversation with a coworker yesterday when he discovered this blog.  The above quote is his.  I wasn’t quite sure how to follow that.  He is in fact from a different country (India), but still, I think I was under the impression that just about every modern school system in the world had some exposure to Shakespeare. So, what would you say?  I don’t think it’s appropriate to just jump in and say “Oh, well then, it’s Romeo and Juliet for you!  Right now, get started!  Come back when you can discuss Queen Mab.”  Especially not without the benefit of a teacher who is going to stop you after every scene, answer your questions, and make sure you’re getting the general idea.  I suggested he make it a point to go see some Shakespeare, and showed him Bard in Boston as a great place to start.  And I lent him my copy of Bryson’s Shakespeare biography.  If he likes that, I’ve got plenty of others to show him….