{"id":119,"date":"2005-06-10T10:56:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-10T10:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=119"},"modified":"2005-06-10T10:56:00","modified_gmt":"2005-06-10T10:56:00","slug":"10-pages-in-book-review-case-histories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2005\/06\/10\/10-pages-in-book-review-case-histories\/","title":{"rendered":"10-pages-in book review: Case Histories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m about 40 pages into Kate Atkinson&#8217;s <em>Case Histories<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t remember where I read the recommendation for this book, and I wish I could. The person making a recommendation has a lot to do with my frame of mind when I start reading a book. I didn&#8217;t know a thing about it when I started reading, hadn&#8217;t even read the Amazon reviews.<\/p>\n<p>(Sidebar: do you like to read a lot of reviews or talk to a lot of people who&#8217;ve read the book before you read it, or do you prefer a blank slate? Just curious.)<\/p>\n<p>I almost put it down within the first two chapters. I just couldn&#8217;t see where it was going. More accurately, I wasn&#8217;t sure it was somewhere I wanted to go. But there&#8217;s just enough in it to make me curious. I think it&#8217;s going to be a series of linked short stories, and I&#8217;ve always been a fan of short stories. The tone is very sombre, though. Not nearly as uplifting as that <a href=\"http:\/\/momm-eh.blogspot.com\/2005\/05\/read-this-book-time-travelers-wife.html\">other <\/a>book I can&#8217;t stop thinking about.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I do find quaint about this book is that the edition I&#8217;m reading hasn&#8217;t been edited to take out all the charming little British colloquialisms. You can feel the cadence of the British speech rhythms in the writing. (This is the same reason I liked <em>Harry Potter and the Philosopher&#8217;s Stone<\/em> so much better than <em>Harry Potter and the Sorcerer&#8217;s Stone<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve decided to stick with it.<\/p>\n<p>Hmmm, after getting all this down, I&#8217;m beginning to doubt just how clever my new little trick is. Not much meat, is there? Speak, bloggy friends: what say ye? Shall we give it one more try?<\/p>\n<p><em>Edited 19 June to add this conclusion:  <\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/>I was wrong.  This is really quite a terrific book!  I got so wrapped up in the quirky characters and their odd entanglements that I was sad when the book ended.  I wanted to know more about them, their lives, and where it all ended up.<\/p>\n<p>Definitely worth reading!<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"technoratitag\"><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Categories: <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/del.icio.us\/danigirl\/Books\" rel=\"tag\"><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Books<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m about 40 pages into Kate Atkinson&#8217;s Case Histories. I can&#8217;t remember where I read the recommendation for this book, and I wish I could. The person making a recommendation has a lot to do with my frame of mind when I start reading a book. I didn&#8217;t know a thing about it when I &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2005\/06\/10\/10-pages-in-book-review-case-histories\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;10-pages-in book review: Case Histories&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-pages-in"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}