I wasn’t looking forward to reading "Hamlet" by Shakespeare. Up until this point, Shakespeare has meant sitting outside on the ground for hours on end. At first I enjoy it, then it just stretches on as my back starts to hurt. Plus, it feels like every production either on film, or in plays, the actors over pronounce everything, thus making the play last twice as long as it should. It’s like when people are speaking to someone of a different nationality, they just keep speaking English louder & slower. You can say it as slow as you like, I still don’t understand it. I was then relieved to notice that Shakespeare’s longest play was quite easy to read, & I could finish it in a few afternoons.

Of course we all know that "To be or not to be" is from Hamlet, but I was surprise that this is supposedly the most often quoted play of all time. I was surprised at how many quotes were in this play, basically everything we say can be traced back to Hamlet. It’s easy to see why with such phrases as:

• the quick & dead
• cruel to be kind
• Neither a borrower nor a lender be
• dog will have his day
• to thine ownself be true

I actually really enjoyed the story since I was setting the timing of it, & it didn’t’ cause me any back pain.

Tried to garden, found it disgusting. However, I did not get the chance to use the expression "you bulbed me", but that’s only because there weren’t any bulbs to throw. 

Drove a Jeep.  At first, I thought it’s just a car.  It is not.  It’s magical, like the risotto.  I felt so Lorelai.

Gave out the name Squeege Beckenheim to see how many mailing lists I would get on.  Not really, but the list just looked so much better with three things on it, & I only did the first two sooo for good feng shui, I had to add a third.

During the first five minutes of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", I checked the DVD box three times, read six reviews of the movie online, restarted it four times, & tried to figure out why my DVD was "broken" & would only play some weird director’s cut.  It took me another twenty minutes to settle into the movie, I liked the story, but the way it was told was just too choppy, it took a lot of getting used too.

I felt the same way about the book "Oracle Night" by Paul Auster, except that I never settled into it.  I was reading a book about someone writing a book about someone reading a book.  It also didn’t help that there are footnotes that go on for 3-4 pages at a time, some of the footnotes are fiction, others are real. The footnotes could’ve easily been worked into the story, all & all it felt like a first draft that accidentally got printed before it was finished.

This is Paul Auster’s eleventh novel.  It’s obvious because he never would’ve gotten away with this in his first novel.  Again, it’s not the story, the story is great, it’s just the way it is written.  Very avante garde, there’s a reason books haven’t been written like this before, they are impossible to read. I will give him another try on one of his earlier novels to see if it’s any better, if anyone can recommend any other Paul Auster books, I would love to hear about them.  It’s like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", but without the good stuff.