Wow, it’s been a busy week. A LOT going on . . .

1. I had the theater experience of a lifetime. God bless the University Musical Society, for bringing the Royal Shakespeare Society to Ann Arbor, Mich. They didn’t just come and do a couple of shows, either. They were in residence for three weeks, giving talks and lectures and demonstrations and so forth. And we saw Julius Caesar and The Tempest. In the car on the way to The Tempest, I must admit Steve and I giggled over the fact that while we would be watching Patrick Stewart (as Prospero) in the flesh, our kids would be back home with the babysitter watching him in X-Men 3. And The Tempest was, well, I can’t even come up with an adjective. All I can say is, at the end, during the applause, people were shouting not Bravo but Thank you to the actors. And Steve and I were quite literally trembling as we left the theater.

2. The first thing I did when we got home after The Tempest was pull out the Shakespeare. Steve and I both distinctly heard the word “yare” in the opening scene, to our great delight, and we had to look it up for the pleasure of seeing it in print. And the second thing I did was find my battered copy of the Salterton Trilogy and indulge in a delicious re-read of Tempest-Tost, Robertson Davies’ viciously funny novel about an amateur theater production of guess which Shakespeare play.

3. Watched the football game at my sister’s house. A sad day. Still reeling from the loss of our beloved Bo Schembechler.

4. Steve and I watched the new biopic about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. I was a little nervous because it’s happened more than once that I read a warts-and-all biography of an adored hero and then found my admiration subsequently, uh, lessened. James Herriot is a notable sad example. (Hen-pecked husband? Invented some of the supposedly-true events? I was happier not knowing!) But I am pleased to report that Dylan is still as mystifying as ever. What a complex, fascinating, puckish creature! And Joan Baez is SO cool.

5. Between Shakespeare, Roberston Davies, Bob Dylan, and U-M football I somehow managed to start next month’s book club book. We’re reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman and I am loving it. I mean, jeez, what’s not to love about a main character of this description:

Laziness, was, I am afraid, Charles’s distinguishing trait. . . . He knew he was overfastidious. But how could one write history with Macaulay so close behind? Fiction or poetry, in the midst of the greatest galaxy of talent in the history of English literature? How could one be a creative scientist, with Lyell and Darwin still alive? Be a statesman, with Disraeli and Gladstone polarizing all the available space?

You will see that Charles set his sights high. Intelligent idlers always have, in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. He had, in short, all the Byronic ennui with neither of the Byronic outlets: genius and adultery.

A protagonist after my own heart. :)

6. And you may have noticed Magic for Beginners listed in my sidebar. Slowly — it’s short stories, therefore easy to set down for long periods — but surely I’m making my way through this wonderful collection. She reminds me of Joan Aiken, but for grownups. If you loved Aiken’s marvelous short stories when you were a kid, especially if you ever read the collection called Not What You Expected, you will feel right at home with this one. Not What You Expected was, for me, what Kate would call a signpost book, a book that “helps the reader to better understand what language can do, how a story or a novel or a poem works, thereby enhancing that reader’s appreciation for literature as an art form, and sending him or her off into the next reading experience equipped with a more discerning eye.” I love Kate’s idea of signpost books, and I’ve thought a lot about books in those terms ever since she wrote that post. Anyway, this book, Magic for Beginners, has a style and flavor very reminiscent of Joan Aiken’s, and I recommend it highly.