{"id":1361,"date":"2004-09-23T09:35:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-23T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=1361"},"modified":"2004-09-23T09:35:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-23T17:35:00","slug":"1361","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=1361","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Back when I was in high school, I read Anne Rice&#8217;s <i>Interview with the Vampire<\/i>. When a classmate asked me to describe it, I remember saying that, while it was a two- or three-hundred page book, it <i>felt<\/i> like it was five- or six-hundred. It wasn&#8217;t terrible, but I remember it mostly as slow and somewhat&#8230;<i>lethargic<\/i>. It was a bit of a slog.<\/p>\n<p>There are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/NASApp\/cs\/ContentServer?pagename=thestar\/Layout\/Article_Type1&#038;c=Article&#038;cid=1095804613613&#038;call_pageid=968867495754&#038;col=969483191630\">those<\/a> who say it&#8217;s all been downhill since then.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;ve never felt any great compulsion to read the other books in her <i>Vampire<\/i> series (or any of the others), and the compulsion I had to watch the film of <i>Queen of the Damned<\/i> wasn&#8217;t exactly what I&#8217;d call rewarding. Maybe the books are okay, maybe they&#8217;re piles of dren. But, regardless, I think it&#8217;s foolhardy for Rice to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/cdp\/member-reviews\/AB4F6UHL20U95\/ref=cm_cr_auth\/104-9518214-6015168?%5Fencoding=UTF8\">start attacking readers<\/a> for not liking her latest book, <i>Blood Canticle<\/i>. It&#8217;s probably even <i>more<\/i> foolhardy for her to boast that she won&#8217;t let an editor near her manuscripts &#8212; especially since, from what I&#8217;ve seen of her writing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.annerice.com\/msg092204.htm\">online<\/a>, she&#8217;s in need of at least a proofeader.<\/p>\n<p>Again, I haven&#8217;t read the other books in the series or this latest one, but Rice&#8217;s proud declaration that she feels &#8220;utter contempt&#8221; for her Amazon readers hasn&#8217;t left me too eager to continue. As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.neilgaiman.com\/journal\/2004\/09\/de-gustibus-and-how-to-reply-to-bad.asp\">Neil Gaiman points out<\/a>, it&#8217;s probably best for authors to &#8220;resist the urge to put [responses like this] to paper.&#8221;<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back when I was in high school, I read Anne Rice&#8217;s Interview with the Vampire. When a classmate asked me to describe it, I remember saying that, while it was a two- or three-hundred page book, it felt like it was five- or six-hundred. It wasn&#8217;t terrible, but I remember it mostly as slow and &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=1361\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-1361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}