Joshua B. Christensen
3 books read for LibriVox
- Fair warning, it's long and blood-soaked, and the battle scenes name every man who falls. But underneath is Achilles wrecked by grief, and that scene where Priam kneels before his son's killer will stay with you; if you can handle slow patches, it earns everything.
- The comedy bits are light (Portia testing suitors with riddle caskets), but Shylock's "hath not a Jew eyes" speech will sit with you for days. It's uncomfortable, deliberately or not, and that tension is exactly why it's worth arguing about afterward.
- You get Viola’s clever, tender balancing act, Malvolio’s wonderfully sour self-importance, and a comedy that keeps slipping between farce and real loneliness. The mistaken identities can feel deliberately tangled, but the language is playful enough to reward reading aloud, especially when the characters are trying hardest to hide what they want.