David Goldfarb
12 books read for LibriVox
- An hour's read that leaves a bruise: a young woman buries her brother knowing it will kill her, and Creon digs in until it costs him everything. If you like arguments where both sides have a point and neither will bend, this is the one.
- Come to it for Imogen, who stays clear-eyed and funny while everyone around her behaves appallingly (Iachimo hiding in a trunk to spy on her is genuinely creepy). The plot is a wild tangle, but the last scene, where every secret unravels at once, is weirdly satisfying.
- You get a rough, episodic history play with flashes of Shakespearean energy, especially in Edward’s pursuit of the Countess of Salisbury and the Black Prince’s battlefield speeches. It’s uneven and not wholly Shakespeare’s, but the mix of courtly temptation, war, and sudden moral seriousness makes it an intriguing afternoon read.
- Fair warning, this is grief held at a scream for most of its length, Electra pacing outside the palace refusing to let her father's murder go quiet. But when she cradles the urn she believes holds her brother's ashes, the scene wrecks you every time.
- Sophocles wrote this near ninety, and it shows in the best way: a blind, exhausted Oedipus finally finding a place that will take him, with Antigone at his elbow. Slower and stranger than Oedipus Rex, but the ending has a quiet awe that stays with you.
- You have to settle into its dense Renaissance Florence, but Romola rewards you with a woman growing beyond her sheltered life while Tito Melema’s charm curdles and Savonarola’s certainty presses in. It’s morally serious, richly observed, and best when you want a slow, thoughtful read.
- Early, slight, and a bit lumpy (the ending will make you yelp), but Launce's monologues to his stone-faced dog Crab are some of the funniest pages Shakespeare wrote, and Julia in disguise carries real ache. Read it if you like watching genius warm up.
- You get a darkly funny, claustrophobic family drama where Gregers Werle’s hunger for absolute truth collides with Hjalmar Ekdal’s comforting self-deceptions. The wild duck in the attic feels oddly central, and the play keeps asking whether honesty heals people or simply gives suffering a cleaner name.
- You get Shakespeare at his strangest here: Leontes’ jealousy makes the early scenes painfully claustrophobic, then Paulina’s fierce intelligence and a sudden pastoral brightness change the air. It’s uneven and openly theatrical, but its movement from damage toward forgiveness stays with you.
- You’ll appreciate its strange, abrasive energy: Timon’s lavish generosity curdles into furious contempt, while Apemantus needles him with the honesty nobody else will risk. It’s a jagged, unfinished-feeling play, but if you like Shakespeare when he’s bitter, funny, and morally unruly, it stays with you.
- Fair warning, this is Shakespeare at his most lurid, a revenge spiral that keeps outdoing its own cruelty, and Aaron might be his most gleefully unrepentant villain. If you like your tragedy pulpy and unhinged rather than stately, you'll have a grim good time.
- You get Shakespeare at his most sour and slippery here: Troilus and Cressida’s love story keeps colliding with Pandarus’s bawdy meddling, while Ulysses and Hector make the Trojan War feel tawdry rather than heroic. It’s strange, funny, and deliberately hard to settle into, but richly rewarding.