This Book is an AWESOME Book!

William Shakespeare woke up one morning, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, pulled on his high socks and stumbled into the kitchen to make some breakfast.  After deciding that today was a "Apple Cheerio Wednesday", he poured a nice bowl of said cereal and sat down to pen one of his greatest works, Othello, and my favorite book of this year.  Sure, it deals with social issues and blabbity blah blah but I read a book for the characters and their reactions to situations, and oooooohhhhwweeee does Othello deliver the goods or what? Othello represents this eternal quest to be taken seriously by our peers and never truly succeeding to meet other's unrealistic expectations:"Speak of me as I am"(Shakespeare, 5.2.338).  The ladies, admittedly, do very little for me as an actor (unless I watch an actor perform them on stage) but my favorite character, of any character this year, has got to be Iago! He redefines villainy to a point where I have to applaud him for straight-up fooling everyone and controlling the entire situation...until the very end:"I am a very villain else"(4.1.127)  When compared to Iago, everyone seems like a hero, even Ms. Serensky when she argues with our perfectly rational choices in regards to non-fiction authors:"HARRIET JACOBS WAS A SLAVE! HOW DARE YOU HATE HER!!"(Ms. Serensky, That one time I said I hated Harriet Jacobs).  Finally, the true reason I love Othello comes from the poetry in Shakespeare's writing, no one can replicate that in a way that both reads well and can be acted well (Lord knows I've tried pretty pathetically, see previous blogs for examples). So, to end, I say to my copy of Othello, "I am your own forever"(3.4.476).