There’s something so delightful about the unrestrained drama of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. As I wrote in the foreword to my annotated edition--on sale now!--very few of the characters act with anything resembling common sense. It’s all, “This is how I feel! Hang the consequences!” Most of us have probably been tempted to act that way, but we subsume* those instincts so we don’t die of our own stupidity. Romeo and Juliet is under no such obligation, giving us a gl

Ivanhoe really does feature everything you could want in an English adventure story: sword-fights, Robin Hood, Richard the Lionheart, damsels in distress, knights, heroes, scoundrels, and plenty of derring-do.

I recently drove from Texas to Minnesota, and decided it was high time I dive into some classic literature that's long haunted my TBR pile: specifically, anything by Sir Walter Scott.

It's no secret that some summer reading books are better than others. Over the years, I've developed a few hard-and-fast rules to sort the wheat from the chaff. Follow them to ensure you don't waste your time on something pointless when, trust me, there are countless good books out there. How to Find a Good Summer Reading Book: It can't have been published in the past 10 years - If it's actually good, it'll still be around in a few years. Modern books are usually fads and not

It's no coincidence that when America decided Latin was too "old fashioned," the humanities stopped producing great minds.

Something has felt instinctively "off" about society's relationship with technology for a long time. I tried (and failed) to delete Vocabbett's social media accounts after New Year's because of it. But businesses need clients, and today, they all live online. More importantly, my refraining from the (already rare) Instagram post did nothing to make my 5-year-old son stop asking for "iPad," or talking ad nauseam about his "pets" in Bottle and Minecraft. Before you gasp and say

The moment I began annotating classic novels, people started asking, "Why don't you do Shakespeare?" "It's been done!" I'd reply.

Did you know you can support your favorite author by buying directly from their website? That's right! Amazon even makes it easy with this simple link: www.amazon.com/sendtokindle ! It takes about 5 seconds longer than buying the book on Amazon, but your favorite authors will thank you forever. For instance, here is the link to my shop , where you can buy things directly from Vocabbett. Here's how to do it: Download the book (from the thank-you page or your email) Go to ...