Since we’re now into July – halfway through the year! – and I’m 50 books through my 100 book challenge for this year I thought it was time to stop and review my top picks from the first half of 2014. So without further ado, here they are. [book-info title=”The Empire Striketh Back” author=”ian-doescher”] My first pick for my top books of 2014 so far is Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars. This includes Star Wars: Verily a New Hope and The Empire Striketh Back. For those of you who have not read my reviews, Doescher has taken George Lucas’s epic space opera and rewritten it in the style of William Shakespeare, compete with iambic pentameter and nods to Shakespeare plays. It’s incredible how well the Lucas’s epic saga works in Shakespearean language. The audiobook by Random House Audio is a full cast radio play complete with John Williams music and sound effects and is a must-listen. It narrowly missed out on the Audie audiobook award. The Jedi Doth Return is released on July 1st and I’m fairly confident it will make my top audiobooks list, too. Check out Doescher’s Educator’s Guide for more background info. I wish these had been…
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars – The Empire Striketh Back by Ian Doescher is the sequel to William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, a retelling of George Lucas’s space saga in the style of William Shakespeare. I would strongly recommend picking this up as an audiobook rather than ebook or hard copy – Random House Audio’s production is top notch with an excellent cast. It is far more like a radio play than an audiobook and the excellent cast does a wonderful job of telling the story. What I liked The source material. The original Star Wars trilogy is a darn good story. It contains a lot of strong themes which would have been as relevant in Shakespeare’s time as today: love, betrayal, youthful impetuousness, struggle against tyranny. Doescher therefore has a strong base on which to base his adaptation. It also isn’t too jarring, for example, when Han rails against Lando’s betrayal in Shakespearean language as it is a theme and emotion found in many of Shakespeare’s works. Yoda. On my first listen through I was a little disappointed that Yoda didn’t sound too different from the other characters. In the movies, he has a unique speech pattern and I was hoping…
This week I have read some fun books. The first of these is William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher. Doescher has taken the script for George Lucas’s Star Wars movie and translated it into Shakespearean English, complete with the Bard’s iconic iambic pentameter. [book-info] In short, this is the most brilliant piece of writing I have read in a long time. I am a big fan of the original trilogy Star Wars movies and it’s just incredible how well they work in Shakespearean language. Doescher studied Shakespeare and is also a big sci-fi geek and his understanding of both media comes across very well. The dichotomy of the sci-fi content in old fashioned language adds a real interest to the writing. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun to play “spot the (adapted) Shakespeare quotation.” For example, we have “Alas, poor stormtrooper, I knew ye not” referencing Hamlet’s thoughts on Yorrick. I have both the audiobook (narrated by a troupe of Shakespearean actors including the author himself) and I strongly recommend experiencing William Shakespeare’s Star Wars in audiobook format rather than the written word. The cast really brings it to life. Here’s a sample: I gave William…