I decided to reread this classic Shakespearean play while listening to an unabridged audiobook of it at the same time. When I took a Shakespeare course in University, I found that watching the plays while I read along helped me to understand them better. I particularly liked the taped stage productions of the Royal Shakespeare Society, which I borrowed from my library. I’d watch and read along and seeing the actors’ expressions helped me figure out the language much better than those little footnotes at the bottom of the page do when reading. This time, however, I got a dramatized audiobook of the play from iTunes (with multiple actors and lots of sound effects, which really helps) and listened along as I read. I realized that there is really no way to just listen to a play and not read along — you’d get so lost in the characters and trying to figure out who was speaking and entering and exiting the scenes without all the stage directions to guide you. So I definitely wouldn’t recommend downloading Shakespeare onto your iPod unless you intend to read along with it as well — much better to watch the play performed exactly to the script if you don’t want to read it yourself.

Macbeth is a Scottish nobleman who has earned glowing recommendations from his fellow countrymen as a great soldier on the fields. On his way home from a battle, Macbeth and his fellow nobleman Banquo come upon three witches who make prophecies to the two men: Macbeth, already Thane (Lord) of Glamis will soon earn the title of Thane of Cawdor, and become King of Scotland shortly after. They also tell that that though Macbeth will become King, none of his own children will succeed him on the throne — that is destined for Banquo’s lineage.

Upon returning to the King’s castle, one of the witches’ prophecies immediately comes true: King Duncan, so impressed with all he has heard about Macbeth, names him Lord of Cawdor for his brave service to the country. Believing that the rest of the witches’ prophecies must also come true, Macbeth and his ruthless wife, Lady Macbeth, become impatient for the third prophecy to come true. They decide they will murder King Duncan when he comes to stay with them at their castle, and make it seem as if the King’s own sons had each schemed to murder their father so that they may take up his place on the throne. When Duncan is found murdered, the sons flee in fear for their own lives, not realizing they have only supported the story that they had brought about the murder of their own father by running away. With the murdered King’s sons fled, Macbeth is named King of Scotland.

With this new title crowned on him, Macbeth becomes jealous of the witches’ last prophecy — that no child of Macbeth’s shall rule Scotland, but one of Banquo’s will. Macbeth decides to hire killers to murder Banquo and his son so that the witches’ last prophecy can not come true. When the murderers kill Banquo, but fail to capture his son, Fleance, Macbeth returns to the witches to learn more about his fate. The witches tell him that a war will be brought to his doorstep, but no man borne of a woman can kill him, leaving Macbeth with a sense of security that he will live a long life, during which he can no doubt come up with some plan to prevent Fleance and any of his children from assuming the throne.

With each killing, Macbeth falls further and further into madness. He shows remorse in the beginning with Duncan’s murder, but with his cruel wife by his side, and power corrupting his mind, he commits more and more murders to keep himself on the throne. His ambition and overconfidence soon will lead him to his downfall as the rest of the noblemen begin to see what evils Macbeth has committed, and rise up against him to revenge their families and take back their country.

I would not have read this book if I didn’t need to for my new job. It’s not the sort of book I’d pick up to read — a story about a young man and his friends, and the exploits of their last year in high school before they will enlist and join in the effort that was WWII. The cover is also outdated, and didn’t really draw me in. If I had seen this in a book store, I wouldn’t have given it much more than a glance.

So knowing that I would not have read this book otherwise makes the enjoyment I had for reading it that much better. It is the kind of story that I, as a reader and writer, like very much: full of symbolism and parallel meanings woven together so that you must think it through to get to the bottom of the morals and author’s intent. The sort of novel that could be read easily enough from start to finish and come away from having enjoyed a good story, but also complex enough for one to discover much more if you are willing to think it through. (more…)

Initially, I started listening to this audiobook out of my curiosity to know whether Colin Farrell could actually speak for a long period of time without swearing. He can, and I was actually impressed with his vocal performance.

I had heard some good things about the movie version of this novel (which also stars Farrell and another reader in the story, Dallas Roberts), but I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I thought I’d read the book before watching it. And, as I’d just recently gotten an iPod, I decided this novel could be the first audiobook I listened to on it.

I was surprised by how much I liked it. The readers were all very good. None of their readings were monotonous or flat. It truly was more of a vocal performance than a simple reading, which made it easy to listen to for a long period of time; and, considering this (abridged) audiobook totalled more than 7 hours, this is a very good thing. (more…)

My husband bought me an iPod video recently, and one of the really nice features is the ability to listen to audiobooks. I first time I can remember listening to an audiobook was when I was teaching about 5 years ago, and my classes did a novel study on Lois Lowry’s The Giver. The school I was teaching at didn’t have enough copies of the book to assign to each student, so every week I would spend 45 minutes of an hour-long class reading the novel aloud, and when you have 3 classes back-to-back that you have to read aloud to, your voice and throat suffers for it. So I got the audiobook version of The Giver on CD and played it for them instead. It saved my voice, but it wasn’t much consolation as the voice actor that read the story wasn’t very good and I could have done a better job than he did.

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