{"id":1531,"date":"2002-06-30T12:05:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-30T17:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/creator\/2002\/06\/30\/1531\/"},"modified":"2021-04-12T11:17:36","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T19:17:36","slug":"1531","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2002\/06\/30\/1531\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/038549081X\/qid=1025457078\/sr=1-1\/ref=sr_1_1\/103-4103101-4983845\" target=\"book\" rel=\"noopener\">The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale<\/a> was everything I expected plus three. I mostly remember it as being one of the choices of summer assignments for Mr. Munson&#8217;s junior AP English, and even though my choices were good (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0140065172\/qid=1025457965\/sr=2-1\/ref=sr_2_1\/103-4103101-4983845\" target=\"book\" rel=\"noopener\">Ordinary People<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nuvo.net\/hammer\/cols\/1997\/hammer_3_6_97.html\" target=\"book\" rel=\"noopener\">Catcher in the Rye<\/a>), I can&#8217;t help but be impressed that he gave it to unproven high schoolers to read.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been trying to articulate this thought for like fifteen minutes now, and it&#8217;s not coming. It&#8217;s something like this: But. The fact that he had the balls to give rising juniors books like <i>Handmaid&#8217;s Tale<\/i> isn&#8217;t as impressive, really, as the fact that under him we read them and enjoyed them and understood them. Reason number five hundred sixteen I won&#8217;t be a teacher&#8211;I could never live up to that.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0380818191\/qid=1024686680\/sr=12-25\/002-2661396-4339244\" target=\"book\" rel=\"noopener\">The Truth<\/a> was even fluffier than I expected it to be, actually, but still not bad. I&#8217;m most of the way through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0345416880\/qid=1025458352\/sr=2-1\/ref=sr_2_1\/103-4103101-4983845\" target=\"book\" rel=\"noopener\">Enchantment<\/a> now, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hatrack.com\/\" target=\"author\" rel=\"noopener\">Card&#8217;s<\/a> books are only getting talkier and I don&#8217;t like it. He wrote a book called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0898799279\/qid=1025458473\/sr=1-1\/ref=sr_1_1\/103-4103101-4983845\" target=\"book\" rel=\"noopener\">Character and Viewpoint<\/a> a long time ago, and while I still consider it one of the best books on writing I&#8217;ve ever read, he&#8217;s stopped listening to his own advice. I wish he&#8217;d show me what his characters are doing instead of telling me what they&#8217;re thinking. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hatrack.com\/osc\/books\/ender.shtml\">Ender&#8217;s Game<\/a> works so well because it strikes a balance between those two. <i>Enchantment<\/i> is close, but no cigar. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hatrack.com\/osc\/books\/mind.shtml\" target=\"book\" rel=\"noopener\">Children of the Mind<\/a> missed the whole damn booth.)<\/p>\n<p>And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minorityreport.com\/\">Minority Report<\/a> was really good, yadda yadda. I just wish, in a fashion oddly reminiscent of <i>Vanilla Sky<\/i>, that I hadn&#8217;t had to pee so bad for so much of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale was everything I expected plus three. I mostly remember it as being one of the choices of summer assignments for Mr. Munson&#8217;s junior AP English, and even though my choices were good (Ordinary People and Catcher in the Rye), I can&#8217;t help but be impressed that he gave it to unproven high [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,43,23,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-bryan-munson","category-movies","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3456,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions\/3456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}