Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?

I am a little embarrassed about this. 

I’m a reasonably well educated person. I spent 12 years in the public school system before graduating from high school. I earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from a major university. I am attending graduate school right now and I am a teacher. 

I’m embarrassed to admit, I’ve never read a word of Shakespeare.

I blame the school system I spent most of my years attending. They never required me to read Shakespeare. They assigned very few of what people would consider the best of English literature. I’ve never read a book by Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain or William Faulkner.

At some point in my life, I realized that I’d missed out on nearly all of the literary classics, so I started reading them on my own. In other words, no one made me read them. It is an effort that has been well worth my time.

The classics that I have read on my own include: “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald; “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger; “Fahrenheit 451,” by Ray Bradbury; “Slaughterhouse-Five,” by Kurt Vonnegut and many, many more. I set a goal of reading at least one classic per year, and often exceed that goal.

It seems to me that there is a collection of literary works that everyone should have read by the time they graduate from high school. If I had been lucky enough to have a teacher like Mrs. Minaker, I would have been exposed to a great deal more of the best that the written word has to offer. 

Starting today, I am reading Shakespeare’s MacBeth. 

Wish me luck...