{"id":8735,"date":"2012-05-10T22:45:23","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T02:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=8735"},"modified":"2012-05-10T22:45:23","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T02:45:23","slug":"separated-by-a-common-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=8735","title":{"rendered":"Separated by a common language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/81595350@N00\/7150878681\/in\/photostream\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7178\/7150878681_ee3737e698.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today wasn&#8217;t too bad for a Thursday, even if I do feel like I may be getting something like a sore throat again.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, I finally finished reading China Mi\u00c3\u00a9ville&#8217;s novel <i>Embassytown<\/i>. I&#8217;m usually a big fan of his work, but maybe he was due for a disappointment. It&#8217;s been nominated for all kinds of awards, but&#8230;well, here&#8217;s what I wrote over on Goodreads:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Disappointing, which is not an adjective I&#8217;m used to applying to Mi\u00c3\u00a9ville&#8217;s novels. This one is full of intriguing (if not always thoroughly realized or convincing) ideas about language, but ultimately the book feels like a short story or novella masquerading as a novel. There&#8217;s a rich sfnal universe lurking in the corners here, other worlds and governments and alien cultures briefly glimpsed, but here a lot of it feels like window-dressing, or like padding, or like it&#8217;s there just because Mi\u00c3\u00a9ville is interested in telling other stories set on different planets in the same universe. The book isn&#8217;t actively bad, but I never expected it to be genuinely boring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today wasn&#8217;t too bad for a Thursday, even if I do feel like I may be getting something like a sore throat again. Meanwhile, I finally finished reading China Mi\u00c3\u00a9ville&#8217;s novel Embassytown. I&#8217;m usually a big fan of his work, but maybe he was due for a disappointment. It&#8217;s been nominated for all kinds of &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=8735\">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":[],"tags":[16,28],"class_list":["post-8735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8735"}],"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=8735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}