You are keen, my lord, you are keen

You know the problem of sequels--movie does big business, so they make a sequel even if there is no hope that the sequel will mimic the success of the original.  Well, I recently read--or, more accurately, glanced through--one of the book equivalents.

Hill and Ottchen, Shakespeare and the Art of Verbal Seduction

The authors had an earlier book which collected all of Shakespeare's insults.  That is a funny idea--I had heard of that book, but I have never actually seen it.  And, truth be told, I can't imagine ever hunting it down to see it.  But even still, it is a funny idea.  That book did moderately well.  So, a sequel.  You can just hear the authors (or more properly editors) thinking, "Hmmm.  How can we do this again?  I know.  Love."  So, they amassed a bunch of Shakespeare quotations about love--from meeting someone through consummation (but not of the type devoutly to be wished).  The book is really dull.  Reading insults could be fun.  Reading "your praises are too large" and "what should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it." and "I dare not offer/What I desire to give; and much less take/What I shall die to want" and "Stand no more off,/but give thyself unto my sick desires,'/Who then recovers." and so on is really, quite dull.  How dull?  Well, here is an interesting measure--nobody has ever written a review of this book on Amazon.  Nobody.  You can still go there and be the first to review the book if you want--but why bother?  Oddly, the book is now available in paperback too--sometimes it is really hard to explain the Publishing World.

Fortunately the book didn't cost me anything--I picked it up at a Yankee Swap (the Easterners' name for a White Elephant Gift Exchange).  I love Yankee Swaps--it is a great way to get rid of things you don't want but feel bad throwing away because somebody might want them and getting things you don't want but have no problem tossing away because after all you got it at a Yankee Swap.  (Janet is always in angst about them, by the way--she is constantly telling me that the things I wrap up to take to such event aren't good enough for a Yankee Swap because, as she notes, "Nobody would want that!" To which I reply--"Uh, that's the point.")  So, Shakespeare and the Art of Verbal Seduction will be available on the Free Book shelf in the Mount Holyoke Library whenever I next wander over to the library, and some Lucky Undergrad will get a book she too will find utterly useless.

I figured it would be good to add a link to a YouTube clip of some song related to the theme here--has anyone ever written a song about Love?

Finally, I thought of one:  that staple of wedding receptions:  I can't remember a wedding reception at which the DJ didn't play that song.