Thursday Thinks: The Divine Comedy

I'm not usually one to point out my own flaws (I'm awesome, and that's that), but many of you know that I don't do well with poetry. Give me the most-difficult-to-read novel that you can think of and I'll get it done, no sweat. Give me Julius Caesar, and I'm lost.

We never really studied poetry in school-- we read poems, sure, but never learned to properly read them and/or decipher the meaning when they don't say what they mean, and you have to rad between the lines.

Poets such as Edgar Allan Poe; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and my personal favorite, Robert Frost? Those I can handle! Shakespeare? Super old poetry? Not a chance.

That said, I have wanted to read Dante's INFERNO for years now, and never picked it up because I wanted to find it in a nice hardback. Well, I found a gorgeous copy of THE DIVINE COMEDY, and my parents got it for me for Christmas, so I've begun working on it.

I can positively say that it is going to take me for. Ever. To get this done. There's an average of ten pages per chapter thingy ( I DON'T KNOW POETRY OKAY), so I'm thinking of reading one chaptery thing a day. That would leave me finishing the trilogy in about three months.

BUT THAT IS SO LONG. THREE MONTHS TO FINISH THREE BOOKS? 

UNSPEAKABLE!

So, I'm hoping that by the time I get a bit into INFERNO, it'll start to come easy and I can speed through it.

Such are my hopes and expectations. 

Have any of you read INFERNO? PURGATORIO? PARADISO? If so, I want to know!

Happily,

Stephanie