Review: Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The bottom line seems to be that no one really knows anything about Shakespeare's life which made this both a short book and a highly speculative one. However, the wanderings into Elizabethan and Jacobean English history were interesting and Bryson is an excellent storyteller which made this a very good audiobook. The explanations, both in the book itself and in the interview at the end of the audiobook, of why the idea that someone other than Shakespeare wrote his plays is ridiculous was wonderfully done.

I: Interred with Their Bones

Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell


This novel is thriller-meets-literary-history and a very good story. It is book #1 in the Kate Stanley series (which as far as I know only has 2 books in it so far). There was a lot of interesting Shakespeare scholarship stuff and a thrilling chase through a library to keep you turning pages.



This post is part of the Crime Fiction Alphabet 2012 at Mysteries in Paradise.