I swear I've got a problem with old books.

I dropped Lord of the Rings at the point where the big eagle rescued Gandalf from Saruman's steel perch (I recall it was just one almost insignificant line, not unlike the short description of Arwen and her white steed hurrying Frodo away from the Nazgul). I gave up on the Great Gatsby after two attempts, before I got a third of the way. I quit a class studying Romeo & Juliet something like midway through the first scene of the first act. I dropped Nietzche's Beyond Good & Evil after about twenty pages, his Thus Spake Zarathustra after five. I decided not to finish A Hundred Years of Solitude just as I approached the end (simply didn't feel it was worth it). And I struggled through The Old Man & The Sea.

What is this ambivalence I have with books written long ago? Am I doomed to never find delight in the classics?

Which is why, when Hamlet (a 400-hundred year-old play) can keep me hooked for almost a week now, I feel reborn. I'm not incapable of appreciating this stuff after all! A tone-deaf turned soprano couldn't have felt more elated.

I've been reading parts of Hamlet continuously. I whisper "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", to the friendly ridicule of my wife, my colleagues and students. I pounce at a chance to throw a line at an appropriate time.

Say 'sleep' and I'll say, "and perchance, to dream". Say 'seems' and I'll do that whole gig in Act I, Scene II which end with, "these are but the trappings and suits of woe." Something unusual (or anticipated) happens and I cry, "O my prophetic soul!"

It all sounds weird, I know. You might think I've emerged from some cactus-infested island (or maybe I should be left in one to recuperate).

But I've discovered that filling your mind with these incredible verses has a soothing and clearing effect. My love for the language grows. Where I used to see words as tool pieces to be rearranged according to what fit the need, now I think of them as colours which await ever new shades, tones and juxtapositions as per what life says they must be.

I used to think of language as just one violin, versatile and able to create all manner of tune. But Shakespeare lets me hear a full symphony. And I doubt I've heard true music until I read Hamlet.

I play, flip and turn those words around in my mind, letting it sink in. I find my spirit soaring as I try to relive the mood and the depths of the verses. How can one remain glib and trivial when thinking (out loud) about, "...the whips and scorns of time, the law's delay, the pangs of disprized love (you gotta say all this slowly and with conviction, ok? or it doesn't work!), the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes."?

I imagine that you could sell me my own shirt if you wrapped your pitch in Hamlet-like prose. And I can't wait to adorn with this wondrous gift of language the equally breath-taking gift of life, truth and love, to name just three more. I seem to have some missing part of me, eagerly seeking re-union with the rest of Being.

'Tis a consumation, devoutly to be wished.