The Collaborators, 6th Edition

It's been over 4 months since Alaina of That's What She Read have done a collaboration! In my estimation that is far too big a gap and I reserve the right to blame this absence of collaboration for why I haven't read as much as I did last year! She might see things differently but I point to how quickly she's managed to crank out reading and reviews! I think she borrowed my quick reading and reviewing capabilities and forgot to give it back! What do you think? I kid! I kid! We have simply both been busy, I think, and you know, before you know it, 4 months has passed and you wonder, what the heck?!

I know I was beginning to go through withdrawals and felt like "The Collaborators" might be coming to an end!?

Hey @WillBeFunOrElse, when the H-E-double hockey sticks are we gonna collaborate again?! We haven't since APRIL?!
— Erica Drayton (@NYCBookWorm84) July 4, 2014

I may have overreacted a bit, but thank God I did because it worked!

@NYCBookWorm84 finished my book last night. Pre-review will go up tomorrow, but ready for next Collaboration when you are!
— Alaina Patterson (@WillBeFunOrElse) July 28, 2014

We're back! And not only that, but we are back with our very first sequel to a previous collaboration that will take us back to our 3rd collaboration! It was a cold December 2013 when we made the wise decision to read Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope. This, as you must all remember is based on the 4th Star Wars movie, had William Shakespeare been the author! If you need a reminder as to how much we loved this book, you can find the review here.

I'm so excited to read the 5th Star Wars book as if the Bard William Shakespeare himself would have written it! I think what I'm most stoked about it seeing how Shakespeare would have written the dialog for Yoda who spoke rather oddly already! To put his strange, yet wise, way of speaking into iambic pentameter when it seems to operate on its own rhythmic speech pattern already seems mind boggling to me!

I must say my library of books (numbering in the hundreds upon hundreds already, evidenced by my 6 bookshelves!) has quite the collection of Quirk Books added to it! If you haven't heard of them I just want to note that they have a unique assortment of authors whose minds are, in my estimation, wildly eccentric and unbelievable but I just CANNOT get enough of them! Some notable authors include:

- Ben H. Winters whose book The Last Policeman, won the 2014 Edgar Award for best Paperback Original!

- Ransom Riggs whose book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is currently being directed by none other than Tim Burton! He also just released the sequel, Hollow City, earlier this year!

To follow along with us on Twitter search for #TheCollaborators or simply follow us!

Alaina - @WillBeFunOrElse

Erica - @NYCBookWorm84

William Shakespeare's Star Wars by Ian Doescher (Book Review)

William Shakespeare's Star Wars

by Ian Doescher

169 pages

Quirk Books, 2013

Play in V Acts

Read in 3 days

Rating: ★★★★★

Amazon | BN

"C-3PO: Now is the summer of our happiness"

Review: The time has come for the 3rd Edition of Pinky and the Brain collaborating yet again on another great read! This was was MUCH more fun than the last two books, and how could it NOT be?! I mean, putting Shakespeare and Star Wars together has GOT to be fun at some point, right?

MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE: @NYCBookWorm84 and I are collaborating on William Shakespeare's Star Wars. Follow along! #TheCollaborators
— Alaina Patterson (@WillBeFunOrElse) December 28, 2013

I think it's fair to say Alaina of That's What She Read and myself took MUCH longer than we should have to read this but she was busy working and I was busy not working yet being very sick and our schedules never really meshed even AFTER we both finally finished the book to actually collaboratively review the book together like we always do so ANYWAY...

@WillBeFunOrElse where to begin but at the beginning really! I do want to say as a whole this was brilliantly executed! #TheCollaborators
— Erica Drayton (@NYCBookWorm84) December 28, 2013

First things first. This was written in classic Shakespearean Iambic Pentameter. Don't know what that is? FOR SHAME! Go look it up before you read any further! Now, as for the rest of you smart thespians ;-)

@NYCBookWorm84 #TheCollaborators I caught "Friends, Romans," "Band of Brothers," and the Dagger speech from Macbeth, among others.
— Alaina Patterson (@WillBeFunOrElse) December 28, 2013

We got the ball really rolling when discussing which character we liked best as well as which soliloquy we liked as well. For characters I felt Darth Vader's was the best because I was able to see a side of him through reading his innermost thoughts that I could never really see in the movies. Alaina seems to have quite the crush on Han Solo? Or maybe I was reading too into her answer? She could just have a thing for Harrison Ford? ;-)

@NYCBookWorm84 #TheCollaborators but my favorite soliloquy would have to be Luke's in V.v when he redoes the band of brothers speech
— Alaina Patterson (@WillBeFunOrElse) December 28, 2013

@WillBeFunOrElse my fave lines were from Darth Vader. He came off more 'human' than movie. #TheCollaborators
— Erica Drayton (@NYCBookWorm84) December 28, 2013

If you've ever seen the movies (and I'd wager there are less that haven't seen this movie, especially now that Alaina has joined the ranks with the rest of us!) then as you read this book you'll find yourself picturing the cast and the sequence of events happening simultaneously. The movie and the book hardly differ except for the way in which they speak.

I do appreciate that the author didn't "dumb down" the Shakespearean language for the readers and kept it as true to form as if Shakespeare had written this saga himself.

And even though she fancies herself as Pinky in our duo I must say that of the two of us, she brings about the most incite into the books we read.

@NYCBookWorm84 #TheCollaborators The use of the soliloquy gives us more insight into these characters than what we'd see on-screen --
— Alaina Patterson (@WillBeFunOrElse) December 28, 2013

She goes on to say...

@NYCBookWorm84 #TheCollaborators before we could only infer his desire for adventure; now we can hear it as well.
— Alaina Patterson (@WillBeFunOrElse) December 28, 2013

We then got into a bit of an argument about actually putting this production on. Apparently Alaina will need more than just duct tape to create all the props and sets for this! BOO!! I still think we could do it!

And, seeing as this book is under 170 pages I don't see what more I can say about how great this book is...well...perhaps...

@WillBeFunOrElse 'There let our heroes rest free from attack, Til darkness rise and Empire striketh back.' Fitting end? #TheCollaborators
— Erica Drayton (@NYCBookWorm84) December 28, 2013

Summary: Return once more to a galaxy far, far away with this sublime retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. ’Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearstome Stormtroopers, signifying...pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter—and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations--William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for.

The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett (Book Review)

The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession

by Charlie Lovett

347 pages

Penguin Group, 2013

fiction/history

Read in 5 days

Another Review

My Rating: ★★★★★ 

Amazon.com / BN.com

"Wales could be cold in February."

Review: If you are a lover of books, history, and the 90's then this is the book for you. I truly marveled at the way Charlie Lovett was able to weave together the history of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century with a love story from the 1980's, culminating into a deadly mystery in the "present" time of the mid-nineties. For a story that jumped around to three different time periods as well as locations I never once found myself confused as to where one story left off and where it was being picked back up several chapters later. Moving from the WAY past to the closer past and to the present actually worked in the authors favor. I became more invested in where the story was going as more and more of the mystery was revealed.

Basically this is truly a novel of obsession about a man who loves only two things in his life: antique books and his wife. The only thing that could make his life even more happy is if he were to discover the book sellers version of the "Holy Grail." That of course differs depending on what exactly you would be trying to prove or disprove. In the case of Peter Byerly (our main character), in trying to cope and move on from the sudden and tragic death of his wife, he stumbles upon proof that William Shakespeare is in fact the author of his many plays and sonnets. Strange that there happens to still be so many who believe he did not exist, let alone single-handedly write all those brilliant plays. I won't go into the reasons behind these conspiracy theorists theories but they do exist. Anyway, a very old and ancient mystery is awaiting Peter to solve and in doing so he is able to finally close the book on one of his major loves: his late wife.

Discover a mystery like you never thought possible. Fall in love with not just the words but the history behind the binding and the meticulous detail that I believe is still today put into the books we read. So many of us, myself included, take for granted the words we read and most definitely the binding and paper that keeps those words together. After reading this book I have gained a new appreciation for first editions, only editions, and most of all the care and respect that was given to books long ago when having a book printed, then sharing it or passing it along to loved ones was more than just a way of life, it was worth dying for.

Summary: A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller’s search through time and the works of Shakespeare for his lost love 

Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman’s Tale is a former bookseller’s sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature’s most tantalizing mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession. 

Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn’t sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn’t really her. The watercolor is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture’s origins. 

As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare’s time, Peter communes with Amanda’s spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.

To learn more about Charlie Lovett, visit his site here.