Rowan Tree and Red Thread

For most of last year I've been using DailyLit, a wonderful service that emails you books in little chunks. I've found that I read on my Blackberry them while sitting with my daughter as she drifts off to sleep, or while walking to work and in other quiet moments during the day. There's quite a variety of books available, so you're bound to find something worth your time.

Just today I received Sonnet 154 of 154, from the collected sonnets of William Shakespeare. I'm counting this a book finished in 2009 although most of it was read in 2008, just because.

I'm not sure of my overall impression of the sonnets, spread out as it was over half a year, but I did find myself looking forward to each day's new arrival, so the extended exercise didn't turn me off. I'm still most moved by Sonnet 116 for personal reasons, and wonder if each sonnet bears more meaning in memory of the context in which one encounters it than for its intrinsic meaning.

I see from Wikipedia that Simon Callow has done an unabridged reading of the whole 154 sonnets. Interesting...