The Book Club Chronicles

About the Book

The ladies keep trying to find as easier Shakespeare play to study and decided upon As You Like It, a comedy. As they start reading it, they discover that it is complicated. Most of the plot is confined to Acts 1 and 5. They use a Globe version on a DVD and use it and the text for study. They reflect upon the friendship between Rosalind and Celia, and how it changes throughout the play, Celia being dominant until Rosalind disguises herself as a boy, when she becomes the leader. Their reading deepens as they witness their own responses to this very female tale. All wrestle with their physical aging and the threats and advantages of retirement. They reflect on the intensely lyric nature of As You Like It and the many subversions, subtle or not, that Shakespeare wrote into this beloved play. They wrestle with their own love stories, late life marriages, and the how their pasts haunt their present as they struggle to make sense of this simple on the surface but very complicated theatrical play. Most of all, once again they, as a group, revel in the beautiful language of Shakespeare that pierces their hearts and at the same time uplifts them.

About the Author

Joan H Parks lives in Chicago, IL, and after a career in clinical research refreshed her life by becoming a fiction writer. Her undergraduate degree was from the University of Rochester in Non-Western Civilizations, her MBA from the University of Chicago. She studies poetry, including Yeats and the Canterbury Tales (in Middle English); has an interest in the ancient world which she has gratified by studying at the Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago; is an aficionado of The Tales of Genji, which she rereads every year or so. Her family regards these activities with amusement, for she also listens to Willie Nelson and Dierks Bentley. She can be contacted at joanhparks.com