Chapter Eighty-Nine: William Shakespeare's Star Wars

What fun fun fun fun books!  William Shakespeare's Star Wars (three volumes--Verily, a New Hope, The Empire Striketh Back, and The Jedi Doth Return) by Ian Doescher are astoundingly well-written.  As the titles imply, these books are the story of Star Wars told in the style of Shakespeare's plays, and Doescher does a great job both at staying faithful to Lucas's movies and at reproducing Shakespeare's style without mocking Shakespeare.  If you love Star Wars, you should definitely read these plays--it won't take long--and if you have been living under a rock and haven't seen Star Wars, you should see the movies (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi) and then read Doescher's Shakespearean version because it is a bucketful of fun!  If reading the line "Thou art a feisty little droid" (The Jedi Doth Return Act I, Scene 2, line 135) doesn't qualify as fun, what does?

Chapter Eighty-Eight: In Cold Blood

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is undeniably a classic of 20th-century American writing, but it is not a book I ever thought I'd read.  However, when lent a copy by one of my closest friends, I figured I'd at least try it out.  And of course, I was hooked within the first few chapters.  This is non-fiction that feels like fiction, probably the most detailed and artistic journalism I've had the pleasure of reading.  Capote slowly sets the scene, supplying sumptuous details to set you up for the events to follow, and then takes you along on the perpetrators' wild ride, literally, as you follow them across North America and get to know them all too well.  Even though I knew basically what was going to happen before I read the book, Capote managed to keep my interest and pique my curiosity, not so much about the what but more about the why and how and when of the events.  By the end, I felt as if I had almost been an observer of the events he describes.  Even if you don't think this book would be up your alley, I'd suggest you check it out.

Chapter Eighty-Seven: The Swan Gondola

The setting--Omaha, Nebraska, the World's Fair, 1898--is almost as fascinating as the characters in this novel by Timothy Schaffert.  The Swan Gondola follows the story of "Ferret" Skerritt, an orphaned thief-turned-ventriloquist who falls in love with a young actress, Cecily, after meeting her once, briefly, and determines that he will find her at the World's Fair and win her love.  While the plot follows a pretty classic boy-meets-girl-then-loses-girl story arc, Ferret's uniqueness and the appeal of the setting help differentiate this novel from the herd and make it a bit more interesting.  There are a few Wizard of Oz nods, too, which are a bit corny but fun nonetheless.  Billy Wakefield is an average villain with a steampunkish silver hand, easy to dislike; supporting characters August and Rosie are your typical eccentric sidekicks; Mrs. Margaret adds a creepy carnie to the cast; the Sisters Egan are classic spinsters; oddly, Cecily, ostensibly the center of Ferret's attention, is a bit of a non-character, defined more by Ferret's feelings about her than by her own personality.  This is a slow, lazy kind of book, ideal for reading on a lazy summer day.