{"id":516,"date":"2009-12-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T00:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=516"},"modified":"2024-12-31T14:07:36","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T01:07:36","slug":"homecoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/12\/31\/homecoming\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Books 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Homecoming<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">Marilyn Robinson<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">When Marilynne Robinson\u2019s novel <em>Home<\/em> came out, I read it and the companion <em>Gilead<\/em> back-to-back.&nbsp; Presented the eyes and thoughts of single narrator (in one an elderly preacher, the other a daughter returned home to nurse her ailing father) very little material happens outside the routine of daily life.&nbsp; The magic is in the connection established between reader and chronicler, as intimate a relationship as I\u2019ve always imagined an author must have with her character. I also think I finally understand just what religion can mean on an individual level.&nbsp; The two novels, parallel and complimentary, illuminate one another and deserve to be read as a duet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Payback<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">Margaret Atwood<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Rather than <strong>read<\/strong> <em>Payback<\/em> by Margaret Atwood, I heard her present the essays from this book in the 2009 CBC Massey Lectures.&nbsp; In them she addresses debt in all its contexts, economic, social, political, moral and environmental, in a thorough and highly accessible way.&nbsp; Presented with her trademark mixture of ironic humour and acute insight (published just before the financial melt-down), it should do for public awareness of economics what Al Gore\u2019s movie did for global warming<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>The City and The City<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">China Mieville<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Cross-jurisdictional policing is difficult at the best of times, let alone in <em>The City &amp; The City<\/em>, China Mieville\u2019s latest creation.\u00a0 Once unified, these cities have split culturally, linguistically, politically and financially in two while remaining not only contiguous but even (in places) sharing the same grosstopology.\u00a0 Inhabitants mingle constantly but scrupulously \u201cunsee\u201d each other\u2019s world, a nicety strictly enforced by a secret military.\u00a0 Pity the poor detective who has to solve the murder one of his fellow citizens in the other city.\u00a0 Although a change in genre, this tone of this novel will be instantly recognisable to readers of Mieville\u2019s steampunk fiction (as are real-world parallels of place) and should win him new fans too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marilyn Robinson <br \/>\nOtago Daily Times Best Books 2009<\/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":[88,348,74,114,113,18],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-88","tag-best-books","tag-china-mieville","tag-margaret-atwood","tag-marilyn-robinson","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","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=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1445,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/1445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}