Hamlet by William Shakespeare

I read this several times, in high school and college, but this was my first time reading it on my own, for pleasure. There is such a difference reading it on my own, now, as an adult, as opposed to the torture of reading it as a high schooler. Shakespeare's plays really felt impenetrable in my tenth- and eleventh-grade English classes, but they feel interesting and fresh and relatively easy to read now. I don't know if that's just because I'm a better reader, or if it's because I don't absolutely need to understand every line and every symbol that shows up throughout the play; it's just nice to read them and actually like them instead of suffering through them. I listened to this while reading along, because I've found that I like the plays best when I do both--I can understand what's going on better when I hear it, but I don't zone out and stop listening if I'm reading along. I know I'm not getting the most in-depth reading of Hamlet, but I really enjoyed it.

It's a little absurd to try and write a review of Hamlet, considering it's one of the most famous works in the English language, so I'm not even going to try. I am really happy to have read it, and I'm very proud to have reached my goal of reading five Shakespeare plays this year. I may try to do it again next year--because it turns out they aren't really that hard to read.

There was one line in particular that stood out to me: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." I feel like that goes along with a lot of the psychology/life coaching things that people talk about today--you can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you think about it. I like how Hamlet said it better, though.