365 Days of Shakespeare

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is one of my all time favorite books.  I first read it when I was about ten and have read it at least four or five times.  It's about a young girl named Francie Nolan growing up in Brooklyn at the turn of the 20th century.  I feel in love with the character right away - she loves books - and two things in the book have stuck with me every since.  The first is that she goes to the library every day and has the goal of reading every book there - reading about this was one of the first time that I remember being completely fascinated with books and libraries.  The thought of being able to read every single book amazed me to no end, even if it was a really small library!

The second thing in the book is that every night before Francie and her brother go to bed, their mom reads them a page of Shakespeare and a page of the bible.  Here's the quote:

"Before they went to bed, Francie and Neeley had to read a page of the Bible and a page from Shakespeare.  That was a rule.  Mama used to read the two pages to them each night until they were old enough to read for themselves.  To save time, Neeley read the Bible page and Francie read from Shakespeare."

Anyways, I've always wanted to do this - going on almost 15 years now.  But i figured it out and it would take me four years...way too long.  Then I thought I could read both in a year.  But that seemed a little unrealistic.  So I decided to focus on Shakespeare this year - and hopefully tackle the Bible next year.  Shakespeare has always been a struggle for me and I thought I'd be good to get it out of the ways first.

My plan is to read a couple pages each day.  I'm reading the Barnes & Noble Collectable Edition.  There are 1263 pages...minus the glossary is a total of 1252 pages.  That's 3.43 pages a day.  Should be doable, right?  I'm then going to right a blog post after I finish each play with the label 365 days of shakespeare.  

Wish me luck :)