Where's the most interesting place that you have read a book? As you probably have guessed from the title of this post, my answer to that question is: a barn. A working barn with stalls for horses and horses in said stalls, in fact. You may have even already guessed that I read a Shakespeare play in the barn, because of my use of a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream as part of my title for this post. The play that I read in the barn was not the aforementioned comedy, but The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. At this point, you may be wondering how it even came about that I read Julius Caesar in a barn. Did I randomly decide to go to a barn to read Shakespeare, just so I could say that I done such a thing, or was there some other reason?
The reason that I read Julius Caesar in a barn was because I was spending a few days with a friend, and she had to go to work at her job at the barn, so I accompanied her one day and read aloud to her as she worked. This served the double purpose of occupying myself in that time and entertaining her as she did the montonous task of cleaning out horse stalls. I tried to remember to change voices as I switched between speakers to increase the amount of entertainment I could offer to my friend. We laughed together at the overly dramatic responses that every change seemed to illicit from Caesar. We surmised that he seemed to have something to prove to everyone, but was indecisive about what he could or should prove to anyone, because everyone could sway him just by expressing enough concern or flattery. This conclusion that we reached caused us to not only laugh at Caesar's conflicting responses to any issue, but also to shake our heads exasperatedly as we wondered at his tendency to make decisions without thinking of their consequences first. Oh, to be able to step into a story and to speak sense into a character such as Julius Caesar! Although, I suppose that if we were able to do such a thing, it would make a story less interesting to read.
In the end, I could have read any story in the barn that day, and I still would have had an interesting experience to talk about. The fact that I read a Shakespearean play has more significance to me than it will probably have to any reader of this post. Even then, the most meaningful parts of the experience for me were being able to spend time with and entertain a friend, rather than the actual reading of a Shakespearean play in a barn. The latter is a nice bonus to a great memory. Where's the most interesting place you have read a book and why do you remember it?
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