Book # 3: How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche.

I'm a Shakespeare groupie. Not only do I like (or love) reading his plays, but I've always been very interested in reading about them and about him. So I grabbed this book during my last trip to Stratford (Ontario) last summer as it looked fun.

It's... ok. Marche's ideas are sound; yes, Shakespeare introduced more words into the English language than any other writer before or since, yes he challenged social attitudes of the time with controversial characters such as Othello and Shylock, yes his plays were the basis for a lot of Freud's work... but the problem with this book is there's just not enough depth to any of these. You could (and there have been) entire books on their own written on these topics. And the problem is, I've already read quite a few books written on these various topics.

I admire Marche's passion for the subject, that comes through very obviously, but I can't get past how shallow this book is, especially as I know there's so much more depth. And some of the chapters, like the one on Tolstoy, while amusing, didn't really fit into the overall theme of this book.

Not to sound like a snob here, but this is a nice book for someone who'd like a nice introduction on the length and breadth of Shakespeare's influence and his life and his writings... but that's about it.