I finished By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult. It was really good. It's about how voices of certain groups of people are absent or severely under-represented in entertainment, specifically theater, and have been for centuries. In Shakespeare's time, women could not write for the theater, or be on stage. Women's roles were played by men. But there's actually a theory that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays. For one, he was a full-time actor and businessman. When did he have time to write? Two, in a time when most playwrites collaborated, he worked alone and somehow had nothing but success. Three, when he died, there were no books, manuscripts, or writing implements to give to anyone. Most playwrites would have things they were working on when they died, that other people would then inherit or try to finish. He didn't. Four, he wrote in detail about things he couldn't have known about....like a painting in Italy, where he had never been, or about the canal system in Verona. And there were no guidebooks to describe them. Or how to play a recorder, when he wasn't a musician. He used names that were of meaning to certain people who were also writers, so it's suspected that there may have been a sort of club that wrote many of Shakespeare's works. One of the people who is thought to have possibly written at least SOME of his works is Emilia Bassano. Her family came from Italy as a family of musicians hired to perform for the monarch. She was the first woman in England to have a book of poetry published, so we know she was a writer, she had knowledge of music, of Italy, and used names very similar to those of her family members, etc.
Anyway, the book goes between HER story and modern times, and sheds light on the fact that though women buy the majority of the tickets for theater, there are only a small number of women who write, direct, or produce plays. I found it fascinating and I love the historical aspect of it, and I also read the Author's notes, which can sometimes be pretty boring, but she cited exactly where she found information she used for specific scenes, which was really interesting. This was definitely different than her courtroom stories, but I loved it.
From the New York Times bestselling co-author of Mad Ho…
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