{"id":421,"date":"2007-12-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T00:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=421"},"modified":"2024-12-31T13:15:32","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T00:15:32","slug":"looking-for-jake-and-other-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2007\/12\/31\/looking-for-jake-and-other-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Books 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Looking for Jake and Other Stories<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>China Mieville<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Although novels are the basic staple of my literary diet, one of my year\u2019s best books is China Mieville\u2019s collection <em>Looking for Jake and Other Stories<\/em>.&nbsp; One of the advantages of the short story is the ability it provides the writer to generate an emotional intensity that can be hard to sustain in a longer form, an opportunity Mieville uses to its full advantage.&nbsp; The stories are dark, disturbing glimpses of dystopian landscapes that will be familiar to readers of his other work, it is an essential addition to the library of any Mieville fan and an excellent taster to whet the appetite of new readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Seeing Voices<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">Oliver Sacks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">What it means to be Deaf is a topical issue given recent advances in both cochlear implant surgery and genetic testing for genetic deafness, and the idea that Deaf parents might intentionally have a Deaf child can be incomprehensible at best, morally repugnant at worse.&nbsp;&nbsp; Oliver Sacks\u2019 examination of Deafness, <em>Seeing Voices<\/em>, challenges these (mis)perceptions and introduces the reader to the concept of Deafness not as disability but as culture.&nbsp; Although written over 25 years ago, it provides insights into the history of deaf eugenics, the neurological, psychological and linguistic adaptations that accompany the acquisition of a visual rather than aural language that remain relevant today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>We Need to Talk About Kevin<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">Lionel Shriver<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">When I came across a second-hand copy of Lionel Shriver\u2019s novel <em>We Need to Talk about Kevin<\/em>, I pounced on it with glee.\u00a0 About half way through the first page I realised that it was <strong>not<\/strong> a good book for somebody contemplating having children.\u00a0 By then, it was too late-I couldn\u2019t put it down.\u00a0 Shriver crystalises every single misgiving any prospective parent might have into diamond-like clarity, while rendering it compulsive reading.\u00a0\u00a0 Not only is the prose beautiful, she writes with such skill that the uncompromising climax is both inevitable and unexpected.\u00a0 Kevin will stay with me for a very, very long time indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China Mieville <\/p>\n<p>Otago Daily Times Best Books 2007<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[62,348,74,66,18,86],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-62","tag-best-books","tag-china-mieville","tag-lionel-shriver","tag-odt","tag-oliver-sacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}