The Nature of Things

Okay. I tried. I really did. I tried to like Tracy Chevalier's new book but I just couldn't get into it. I admit part of the problem may have been the constant distractions of the holiday season during which I was reading it. This is another in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, in which modern writers reimagine Shakespeare's works in their own settings and plots. Chevalier took Othello as her source and pattern. That would be a daunting task for anyone. She chose to retell the story of the Moor of Venice as essentially a YA novel featuring the characters as 11-year-old schoolchildren. All the action takes place in one day at an elementary school in Washington, D.C. in the 1970s, with only a few weeks left in the school term. On this eventful day a new boy is enrolled in the school. His name is Osei Kokote. He is the son of a diplomat from Ghana. Apparently, he is the only black child entered in the school, and so he is a figure of great curiosity for the other children and f...

There aren't any movies out right now that I really care to see. There's not much on television that I want to watch except for my Houston Astros and they are doing so poorly that it is often painful to watch them. It's too hot and miserable for outside activities except for the absolutely necessary ones in the garden and I'm not really into knitting, so that leaves me with reading as my summertime leisure activity. Fortunately, there is no shortage of good books to keep me entertained. I've just finished another one. Remarkable Creatures , the title of Tracy Chevalier's book, could refer to the fossils found by Mary Anning along a rocky, windswept English beach or it could refer to Anning herself and her friend and champion Elizabeth Philpot, for these were, indeed, extraordinary women. At a time - the late 18th and early 19th centuries - when women were only allowed one honorable role in life, that of wife and mother, these two women carved their own plac...