I haven’t been doing much knitting lately. I do still care about this project, but I’ve been reading more than usual and also working on another craft – beadmaking – that sucks me into its web once a decade or so. So the knitting project in the photo is nothing new, but that’s OK because I can take this time to tell you about a new reading challenge that I’m kicking off this week.
I learned via promotional email from Amazon that Hogarth Press is commissioning best-selling novelists to write modern re-tellings of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays within the next several years (as far as I can tell there is no specific timetable published). The first novel in the series was just released: Jeannette Winterson’s A Gap of Time, a re-telling of A Winter’s Tale. I am reading A Winter’s Tale now and will start the novel once I’m finished. The next two novels in the series will be Howard Jacobson’s re-telling of The Merchant of Venice and Anne Tyler’s re-telling of The Taming of the Shrew. I am excited beyond belief about this project, which I think of as state quarters for book nerds, except the books will look better than the quarters when lined up on a shelf. And look how nice the two books look alongside my knitting!
I would LOVE it if some of our readers – or, of course, Jill – would like to read along.
Happy Wednesday!
Yarn Along is hosted by Ginny on her blog, Small Things.
Postcards From Purgatory 
That’s fun! I’m a former English teacher (middle school) and I look forward to reading the new editions/retellings! Bead making? Show us, please?
I’ll post some photo of the beads next week. Thanks for asking!
I recently saw somewhere that “they” are doing modern retellings of Jane Austen’s books as well – a couple have been released so far. This sounds really interesting! And I haven’t been doing all that much knitting lately either. My attention and time tend to be pulled in several different directions.
This reading challenge intrigues me. I’m finally starting on my reading challenge that I wanted to start in 2013–the food book challenge…. I’m sure i’ll get to this one sooner or later! 🙂
They’re only publishing 3 novels per year, so it’s not a huge commitment…
Looked the books up on amazon. The Taming of the Shrew one looks pretty good.