{"id":1936,"date":"2014-07-20T16:38:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T00:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1936"},"modified":"2014-07-20T16:38:35","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T00:38:35","slug":"review-what-makes-this-book-so-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1936","title":{"rendered":"Review: What Makes This Book So Great"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>What Makes This Book So Great<\/em> is a collection of\u00a0 Jo Walton&#8217;s blog posts about rereading works of SF great and obscure.\u00a0 While the essays are insightful analyses of works of SF, this is not really a critical work.\u00a0 Walton is quick to point this out herself, and the missing element is any sense of distance.\u00a0 While she consistently marshals considerable insight about the specific works she&#8217;s reading and about SF and literature in general, she&#8217;s unabashedly a fan of the genre and a skilled writer as well.\u00a0 As you can tell from the title, there are no negative reviews in the set.\u00a0 This is about neat books she found while rereading.<\/p>\n<p>One of the first things Walton makes clear is that she is always rereading.\u00a0 If you poke around SF and reading in general, you&#8217;ll eventually run into someone like her.\u00a0 They are always reading something.\u00a0 They can easily read 10 books a week and usually do.\u00a0 For those of us nearer the mean of the books per week curve, it can be daunting to see and hear.\u00a0 But the truth is that folks like Walton are tearing through a frightening amount of text at all times.<\/p>\n<p>While there are readers with Walton&#8217;s appetite, there are few with her insight and enthusiasm for SF.\u00a0 Her reviews are honest, well informed and accessible.\u00a0 The balance between the latter is particularly helpful.\u00a0 She knows a lot about writing and SF history and puts the various works into useful juxtaposition with one another.\u00a0 But she does it in a way that&#8217;s inviting and interesting.\u00a0 She&#8217;s not showing off that she can make these connections, just pointing out what she saw and inviting you to play along.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a very tricky line to walk, and she does it consistently.<\/p>\n<p>I came away with a list of new things to read and an appreciation for the breadth of SF.\u00a0 If you have any interest in that, have a look.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Makes This Book So Great is a collection of\u00a0 Jo Walton&#8217;s blog posts about rereading works of SF great and obscure.\u00a0 While the essays are insightful analyses of works of SF, this is not really a critical work.\u00a0 Walton is quick to point this out herself, and the missing element is any sense of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1937,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions\/1937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}