Let's Bust a Recap : All's Well that Ends Well

All's well that ends well? What a joke. In this lesser-known comedy by Shakespeare, we meet two of his most unlikeable characters to date: Bertram and Helena. 

If you're new around here, let me begin by saying that in most of my recaps, I try my best to be careful not to give away any major plot points or spoilers—even though I'm usually talking about classic literature that's been around for ages. But when it comes to Shakespeare, I give you my unfiltered take on the whole play. If you're on your own quest to read the entire works of Shakespeare (which is one of my personal goals in life) and you've made it this far with little knowledge of what his plays are actually about (which I've managed to do) and want to keep it that way (you have my full support): steer clear.

Now, let's get down to it. 

At the beginning of All's Well that Ends Well, we meet Bertram, his mother and her orphaned ward Helena at the funeral of Bertram's dad. After a cheerful conversation about his father's demise and the King's similar illness, Bertram is off to take his dad's place in the ailing King's court. We then discover that Helena's got it bad for Bertram but is extremely aware that he would never even think about swiping right on her Tinder page.

What's a girl to do? 

She takes herself off to the King's court right behind Bertram to offer up her healing services to the King in exchange for her choice of a husband from all the men in the King's domain. She's so confident she can heal the King that she pledges her own life if he fails to get better. (Can you smell the desperation?) The King finally figures, hey, it's worth a shot; I've already got a foot in the grave anyway and takes her up on her offer. 

The King is healed! (And can I get a bottle of this mystery potion of Helena's for my medicine cabinet?)

Obviously, Helena picks Bertram to be her husband. He then proceeds to publicly denigrate her and says he would rather eat worms than ever marry her low-born behind. To her face, y'all. 

The King tells Bertram to pony up and marry her or he will make his life miserable so Bertram changes his tune real quick. And Helena takes him. 

As soon as the wedding is over, Bertram sends Helena packing back to his mom's house and tells her the day he consummates their marriage will be a cold one in Hell and she can consider him her husband when she's pregnant with his child which will be a hot never as far as he's concerned then takes off to Italy to party it up and sleep with any pretty young thing that catches his eye.

Mama Bertram did not raise her son to be the pus that feeds on pond scum and promptly disowns him, claiming Helena as her daughter and declaring her son could only wish for a woman as good as Helena. (Because we ladies gotta stick together, ya dig? Although if I was Ma B, I would have told Helena to pull it together and scrape up some self-respect.)

Helena's not done with Bertram though. The heart wants what it wants, I guess. She claws her own way to Italy and finds Bertram's latest obsession, a sweet virgin named Diana who is smart enough to see through Bertram's crap and hasn't given him the time of day. Helena convinces Diana to trick Bertram into giving her his family heirloom ring in exchange for her promise to meet up with him for a little midnight hanky-panky. (At which point in the play, I started to get some serious Tamar and Judah vibes.) Bertram falls for Diana's schtick hook, line, and sinker, and they trade rings. Bertram finally gets his little fantasy rendezvous with Diana (or so he thinks) and leaves her in the dust but continues to wear her ring as a little souvenir of his favorite Italian conquest. 

Insert: there's a whole side story going on about Bertram's loser friend Parolles but I don't even deem it worth mentioning so there's that. 

In the meantime, Helena's been busy faking her own death and has everyone back in France mourning her loss. Bertram returns home thinking he's free of the ball and chain so what can the King do to him, right? In fact, why not try to go ahead and set up an advantageous marriage with a Lord's daughter? The King recognizes Helena's ring on Bertram's finger and wants to know what in the blazes is going on, but Bertram feeds him a line of garbage and manages to convince him to set him up with a respectable woman.

Diana shows up to out Bertram's despicable philandering (at which point his advantageous marriage arrangement is done for), and he in turn calls her a common whore (real classy). She sets the scene perfectly so that the King, Mama Bertram, and the entire court of France have no doubt that if she produces the Bertram family heirloom ring, she's telling the truth and Bertram will be exposed for the ridiculous, womanizing liar we all know he is.

BOMBSHELL: Helena shows up pregnant with the heirloom ring and announces that she fulfilled Bertram's challenge to be his baby mama so now he has to be her husband for realz. (In case you somehow missed it, she and Diana pulled the old switcheroo on Bertram in the nighttime.)

So Bertram swears his love to Helena and all's well that ends well. 

Really? Problematic at best. I mean, Helena's about the worst female protagonist I've ever heard of. You can do better, sweetie. 

Not my favorite from Shakespeare and little wonder this was never really one of his popular plays, but I did find it to be more compelling and a lot more readable than As You Like It. However, I'm still sticking with Much Ado About Nothing or The Taming of the Shrew as my top two Shakespearean comedy recommendations. 

What's your recommendation for my next Shakespearean comedy?

Let's Bust a Recap : The Reckoning

I was a total John Grisham junkie in middle school. I got a box of his first ten books or so from a library sale for about a quarter a piece and devoured them. To this day, I would count Grisham's The Partner among my favorite books. But after reading The King of Torts when it came out in 2003, my interest waned and I haven't really revisited Grisham since. 

My dad has kept up with Grisham though and last year he lent me one of Grisham's newer books The Reckoning and told me it was pretty good. It sat in my reading nook for almost a year before I got to it, but I finally did and here we are.

In the first pages of The Reckoning, set in Clanton, Mississippi in 1946, we are witness to the cold-blooded murder of the small town Methodist minister by war hero and Clanton's favorite son Pete Banning. After carrying out his plan to kill Dexter Bell, Pete's only statement about it—to the sheriff, to his lawyers, to the judge, jury, and even his own family—was: "I have nothing to say." 

In the rest of the novel, Grisham takes us back to Pete's time as an escaped POW turned guerrilla fighter in the Pacific Theater during WWII. As we come to truly respect and admire this character, do we ever find out why he did what he did??

This novel strings you along to the very last pages of the book and leaves you suspended in that ethically murky tension of wanting to root for Pete Banning even though he murdered a seemingly beloved husband and father in cold blood. While I don't think The Reckoning quite measures up to Grisham's earlier work, it was a good book and it left me wanting to go back and read all my old favorites. 

I would recommend The Reckoning with the caveat that if you've never read John Grisham before, you should start with one of his first books and not this one. Your first impression of him should definitely be with A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, or The Client. While I was eager to find out the resolution in The Reckoning, it took me about three weeks to get through, whereas with his early books, I vividly remember being unable to put them down for a second.

Have you read any of John Grisham's novels or anything in the legal thriller genre? What's your favorite of his books? My dad has his even newer book The Guardians which is set in a small Florida town and my interest to read that one has been piqued, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it. I haven't actually finished any of the books on my 2020 book list so I should probably get cracking on that. What are you reading right now?

Delaware

Oh happy day! With this post, I am officially caught up on my #SeeAll50 scrapbook pages and blog posts! This has been hanging over me since last May and it feels good to get back on top of things. Now I am ready to plan our next trip, although I have no idea where we are headed next for this project. We are going to do a little international traveling this year to meet a new little niece or nephew so we'll probably stick closer to home with whatever states we check off. 

Anyway, let's get down to business. This will probably be the shortest state post to date. Most of Delaware just looked like this for us: 

We literally drove from the very top of the state all the way down to the bottom. (Which takes less than 2 hours if you were wondering.) If you caught my Maryland post last week, you saw that we checked out of our hotel in North East and drove down to Assateague Island. Well, we were driving through Delaware. It was a gorgeous day and we had fun driving through all the small towns and seeing Georgetown and trying to find pretty, colorful leaves (I mean, it was late October and we don't see a lot of fall foliage in the Sunshine State!). But if you go back to our very first #SeeAll50 post, you'll read that just driving through a state is not the point and we don't check off states that we just drove through. So our plan for Delaware was to hit up the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk. 

So after we spent the first half of Saturday (October 19, 2019) exploring Assateague Island and spotting wild ponies, we drove back up into Delaware to get checked into our little motel for the night. We stayed at the Sea Esta II which wasn't anything to write home about, but all we needed was a bed for one night and it did the job. We got showered and changed and headed back out to find the Boardwalk. 

According to my quick research before this trip, this is one of the top spots to visit in Delaware and it was a lot of fun. I imagine it would be even more fun during the summer because there were a few places closed while we were there since it was off-season. However, right in the middle of the Boardwalk, they had a huge pool set up and there was a dog competition going on to see who's dog could jump the farthest into the pool. Everyone was out on the Boardwalk with their furry friends and we saw some dogs jump nearly 20 feet as their masters threw a toy across the pool to fetch. We wished we could have had Major and Colonel with us. It was a blast. 

We walked all the way down the Boardwalk, ducking into the different funky shops and arcades. We got 2 pounds of fudge (hey! it was BOGO, okay??) from The Candy Kitchen and stopped at Grotto Pizza for some of the yummiest pizza I've ever had. Grotto is an award-winning family-operated business that now has locations in MD, DE, and PA. 

After we had our fill of the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk, we drove back to our little motel and crashed for the night. 

The next morning, we got up bright and early to go find the Mason Dixon marker on the Delaware History Trail.

It's literally in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere. And as you can see, it's completely gated off. Because when you don't have very many important things in your teeny tiny state, you really protect the things you have. Honestly, this was the most memorable part of Delaware for us. This little stretch of road had the Mason Dixon marker and the Welcome to Delaware sign and we were high-steppin' it through wet fields in the rain to check out this stone and get a picture with the Delaware sign, laughing our heads off the whole time. Delaware, you were a delight. 

Delaware : done.

14 states down, 36 to go.

Have you ever been to Delaware? It felt so small! I know Rhode Island is even smaller so I can't wait to go there. Where should we go next?

Maryland

On Thursday, October 17th, Cody and I drove 16 hours straight from Winter Haven, FL to North East, MD. That's right. We stayed in a small town named "North East". They're real original up there in Maryland. We made this trip for the wedding of one of my best friends from college and figured while we were there we would knock out a couple of states for our Bucket List goal to visit all 50 together. 

After a solid night of sleep in our hotel in North East, we woke up to a beautiful sunny day and made the hour and a half drive back down into Baltimore to explore the Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine.

Fort McHenry was the site where Francis Scott Key penned the words to our National Anthem during the War of 1812 after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy. We really enjoyed our visit. The grounds of Fort McHenry are beautiful and the exhibits are informative and interesting. We got to see parts of the original crossbeam (which wasn't excavated till the late 1950s) that supported the broad stripes and bright stars through the harrowing night of battle. They actually have original cannonballs that were fired on the fort  by the British which was cool to see, and everyone working and volunteering at the fort was so knowledgeable and friendly. 

~gigantic monument of Orpheus dedicated to Francis Scott Key and the soldiers of the fort~

~sneaking a smooch behind the armory~

After we worked up a hearty appetite hiking all over Fort McHenry, we went down the street to L.P. Steamers for Maryland crab cakes and crab chowder before making the hour and a half drive back up to North East to get ready for the wedding.

Friday night was all about celebrating Karsch (which I will continue to call her even though her name has legally changed) and her groom.

10/18/19

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early, got checked our of our hotel, and drove all the way down to Assateague Island to see some wild ponies.

When I was in grade school, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry was one of my favorite books and I have always wanted to go to Assateague Island to see the wild ponies. After about an hour of hiking around, I wasn't sure we would see any. But then we stumbled upon a couple...then a couple more...then several all grazing together!

Can you spot the two wild ponies behind us?

They were beautiful and didn't seem to mind our presence at all. I felt like I could go right up to one and pet it, but we were given strict instructions by park rangers and in writing to keep a schoolbus length between us and them so I grudgingly followed orders and let them have their space. I didn't get to see a whole herd of them racing down the beach, but I really enjoyed our day on Assateague Island.

That evening, we stayed in Delaware (the other state we checked off on this trip) so I'll be posting about that next week. Have a Happy Valentines Weekend with whoever you love!

Maryland : done.

Have you visited Assateague Island or Fort McHenry? What is a historical site that we cannot miss in our quest to #SeeAll50? 

Oklahoma

Back in May of last year (I know what you're thinking: She's so on top of her blogging game. Thanks. I know.) we took a quick 4-day trip to the middle of the USA to see my amazing litter sister graduate from her flight training at Vance Air Force Base and receive her wings. 

If right now you're thinking, "Man, I'll never know anyone that cool or that pretty or that talented"...well, you're right. 

We flew into OKC on Thursday, May 30th and drove about an hour and a half to Clinton, OK to visit the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum. The sky in Oklahoma is big, the land is flat, and the roads are next to empty. You feel like you can see for miles and I loved driving there. We found the museum, and it's one of the cutest little spots I've ever seen.

We spent as long as we wanted going through the exhibits, and it was just as much fun as it was interesting and educational. I would definitely recommend a stop here if you're passing through and looking for something quick and fun to do.

As you make your way through the museum, the exhibits are set up by decades from the 20s to the 70s and it is retro and nostalgic and pure Americana.

Right next door to the museum, you can take a peek into this shoebox soda shop which popped up all along the Mother Road during the 50s and 60s. 

After we finished exploring the museum and buying all our Route 66 souvenirs, we stopped for lunch at a Braum's Ice Cream & Dairy Store (which I had never heard of but apparently there are almost 300 of them throughout Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas), and I had one of the biggest burgers I've ever eaten.

After we filled our bellies, we hit the road again to drive the 2 hours to Enid where my sister lives.

My mommy-in-law got to do this state with us!

The rest of the weekend was all about family and celebrating my awesome sister. And one of the craziest things ever is that the other guy in her class getting his wings was a boy I used to babysit when he was little. (Yes, I feel old, but also could not be any prouder.)

I mean, look at those two. Come on.

Oklahoma gets a bad rep for being boring, having nothing to do, and being in the middle of nowhere. A total flyover state and other such nonsense. But it will always be one of the most special states we've visited because we got to see my sister get her wings which is something she's been working towards for years. We're Vance Proud and we loved being in Enid, America.

Oklahoma : done.

2020 Book List

Yesterday I took a little time to reflect on what I read and what didn't work for my reading life in 2019. Last year I read a lot of slow books and didn't give myself the freedom to change things up with familiar re-reads like I usually do. Because of that, I continually lost momentum and a lot of the books I read (even the great ones) seemed to drag. 

But it's a fresh new year and I've created a fresh new list. Cody and I spent the morning pulling books off the shelves to read in 2020, and I'm excited to tackle my 2020 list. (I think Cody may share his list on the blog this week and he might even contribute some guest posts this year. Keep your fingers crossed.) 

In the meantime, here are the books I hope to read this year. As always, if you are interested in reading any of these with me, shoot me a message and I'll be happy to let you know when I start the book so we can read it together and discuss it. Here we go!

Lies Women Believe : Nancy Leigh DeMoss

This Momentary Marriage : John Piper

Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World : Joanna Weaver

John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit : James Traub

Andrew Jackson : H.W. Brands

The Passions of Andrew Jackson : Andrew Burstein

The Four Loves : C.S. Lewis

The Diary of a Young Girl : Anne Frank

All's Well that Ends Well : William Shakespeare

Cymbeline : William Shakespeare

David Copperfield : Charles Dickens

Gone With the Wind : Margaret Mitchell

Middlemarch : George Eliot

The Age of Innocence : Edith Wharton

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall : Anne Brontë

Something Wicked this Way Comes : Ray Bradbury

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass : Lewis Carroll

A Little Princess : Frances Hodgson Burnett

Ballet Shoes : Noel Streatfeild 

All the Light We Cannot See : Anthony Doerr

Hum If You Don't Know the Words : Bianca Marais

See any of your absolute favorites there? You may have noticed that David Copperfield, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and All the Light We Cannot See got carried over from last year's list, and I finally decided to ditch the Unger biography of John Quincy Adams in favor of James Traub's. I'm secretly hoping to make it through a third president this year to make up for only reading one last year, but we'll see how it goes. My list consists of 21 books and I'll be shooting for a total of 24 in 2020. Let's go!

Happy New Year & Happy Reading!

What are you planning to read this year? Do you make a book list for yourself? Are you interested in reading any of the books from my 2020 list along with me?