Bookathon - S

 William Shakespeare. Danielle Steel. Craig Smith.

All my S authors today are bestselling rockstars in the literary universe. Amongst English Majors, nobody can get away from Shakespeare. I thought I would leave him far far behind once I graduated but no he just has a way of popping up all the time in those annoying Pop Up-Globes like someone who doesn't know the show's over and the series has jumped the shark. Yes so like everyone in high school I read Shakespeare and I can't say I loved him, after all, 500 odd years from now what plays or screenplays will we still be performing in endless remakes - do we even know? Will The Simpsons scripts seasons 2-8 or maybe Friends be lauded as the golden age of wit and social commentary and entertainment as Shakespeare's royal soap operas were in his day? 

I call them royal soap operas because many were generally about someone in power, i.e royalty, a King who had something fatally wrong with him. Fratricide being a common occurance in those feudalistic times. Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Henry V, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra were like this. Or they were sitcoms set in exotic places that often had mistaken identities and twins or star crossed lovers like Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, As you Like it, Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer night's dream, The Tempest, All's well that ends well, The Taming of the Shrew et al. 

I want to say Shakespeare may have changed my life, or had some profound influence, but I could never warm to the characters like I could to say, Joey of Friends or empathise with them like Lisa of the Simpsons. Their Elizabethan concerns seemed alien to me and I was never au fait with exactly why everyone was acting so foolishly and stupidly on stage. Women were either strumpets or naive maidens, and men were either arrogant or lovesick. If you love needless drama, read Shakespeare. 

If Shakespeare was living and performed today you would probably end up with something like Diana, the Musical which was quite entertaining on Netflix if you saw it, and he would win a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay. So I am sorry Shakespeare lovers, I can never be in raptures over the beloved Bard and have feelings for him like the Darling Buds of May.  Or he would be like Danielle Steel,  endlessly recycling plots about rich people who turn to rags and then become rich again. You have to admire Danielle Steel, she knows how to tell a yarn, but the thing about Danielle Steel is...her books always ends the same with her on the back cover with her coiffure, designer clothes and expensive jewellery looking at you and smiling as if saying 'you have made me even richer'.  (190 books and counting) 

The last author who cottoned onto a good thing and is milking it for all it's worth, and like The Simpsons, shows no sign of stopping, is one who turned a well known joke into a huge fandom for preschoolers and primary children. Of course I am talking about The Wonky Donkey. Thank you Craig Smith, for all the honky tonky, winky, wonky, dinkey donkey making fan girls and boys of us all. 

If you scan the S's at the bookshop or library today you are sure to find these taking up a lot of room on the shelves, their popularity knows no bounds and if they do get assigned reading in schools, watch out. They will drive you nuts for years to come. 

Keep going with the Great Kiwi Bookathon, where I am reading nonstop A-Z in June supporting blind and low vision children access to books.