This was amusing, entertaining, and sometimes enlightening. Neil Gaiman for the win again!
My husband actually got this out of the library because he heard somewhere in his section of the internet that it was really good. I'd heard the same over here in my section of the internet, so when he finished it, I decided to read it before we took it back to the library. And then life intervened, and War and Peace intervened, and I had to renew it twice before I got around to reading it. Sigh.
Once I actually started it, this was a fast, fun read. It made me laugh aloud in many places, mostly in scenes involving Thor and Loki. Y'all know that Thor is my favorite of the Avengers, and I admit I half read this just to get a better grasp of the mythology behind the comics that gave rise to the Thor of the MCU. Now, this is Gaiman retelling Norse Mythology, and he himself first got into it because of the Thor comics, so... there's a nice circle of common interests there.
Anyway, my son keeps begging to read this, mostly because I laughed so much over it, but he's only 11 and parts of it are pretty graphic about violence, there's some scatological humor, and while there are no described sex-scenes, characters do talk about desiring each other, and they make love and produce offspring, so... I'm making him wait a few years.
Particularly Good Bits:
"Because," said Thor, "When something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it's Loki's fault. It saves a lot of time" (p. 52).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for the aforementioned content. No cussing that I recall, though.
Here are a few amusing Hamlet-oriented things from around the internet that I thought you might enjoy.
I discovered these Hamlet paper dolls a couple of weeks ago. They are hilarious and adorable! And they print up beautifully too. And they have oodles of funny costumes for him other than this sort of to-be-expected one I'm showing here. Like Captain Denmark, Loki, Dr. Who, a pirate, and some very silly ones like the Easter bunny and a ballerina. Great fun!
If you've ever thought to yourself that Hamlet would make a wonderful film noir sort of movie, well, you're not the first to think that. A couple of years ago, I wrote up a review of a totally imaginary film noir version that I invented and created a dream cast for -- you can read it here. My talented and kind sister-in-law created this beautiful poster for it too.
If you like Hamlet-related music, you can listen to Patrick Doyle's soundtrack for the Kenneth Branagh version on YouTube here, and Ennio Morricone's soundtrack for the Mel Gibson version here.
And right now, the Paramount Vault has the Mel Gibson version available to watch on YouTube in its entirety for free, so if you've been wanting to see that, now's your chance! It is here.
Finally, my alma mater performed Hamlet a few years ago, so if you'd like to see college-age actors in the roles, you can watch it on YouTube here. I haven't seen all of it yet, but what I've seen is enjoyable.
Wow. I'd never read this before, and it was not what I was expecting! I mean, I knew the basic story (nice Dr. Jekyll creates a potion that turns him into evil Mr. Hyde), but I had no idea how introspective and philosophical it would get about human nature.
Yes. I'm thirty-three, I've been reading classics since I was a little kid, and I'd never read this novella. In fact, until a few years ago, I thought it was written by H. G. Wells! Which is probably why I thought it would be both more sci-fi and more scary than it is. This is not a scary book. Well, not today. I do like imagining what it must have been like to read this when it was first published. When you didn't know the basic story, and you got to that reveal where Hyde turns into Jekyll before another character's eyes -- how freaky was that?
We're kind of used to the idea now. The normal, nice, helpful guy with the rage monster inside him. I've long thought that the whole idea of the Incredible Hulk draws heavily on this story. Like Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Bruce Banner delves too greedily and too deep into the mysteries of science and medicine. By so doing, he unleashes a beast from within his own self. Like Mr. Hyde, the Hulk acts mostly from his primitive instinct to protect himself. Now, unlike Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Banner can choose to unleash his inner Hulk. And unlike Dr. Banner and his freak gamma ray accident, Dr. Jekyll chose to transform himself into the loathesome Mr. Hyde. He enjoyed it, he deliberately transformed over and over -- at first. And unlike Mr. Hyde, the Hulk isn't a homicidal maniac. But both Dr. Banner and Dr. Jekyll had that monster within themselves all along. Dr. Banner is always angry. Dr. Jekyll has always enjoyed indulging in secret pleasures and vices.
In fact, that's what I find the most interesting about this book: the way it explores the idea of original sin. If you're not familiar with the term, it's the Christian concept that all humans have inherited a sinful nature from their parents. The Bible says, "Surely I am sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). We all are capable of evil -- we all sin every day. Maybe we can hide it, maybe we can fool ourselves into thinking it doesn't matter. But it's there. Dr. Jekyll created an elixir that could distill his evil nature, make his "better self" disappear while his "worse self" came to the foreground. But that worse self had always been there, it had merely been disguised.
Particularly Good Bits:
The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry, so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen (p. 8).
"If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek" (p. 19).
It was a wild, cold seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture (p. 48).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for oblique descriptions of sinful behavior and for mildly scary imagery.
This is my seventh book read and reviewed for The Classics Club and my fourth for the Mount TBR Challenge.
