{"id":20418,"date":"2021-06-27T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=20418"},"modified":"2021-06-27T12:50:54","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T16:50:54","slug":"reading-report-late-june-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=20418","title":{"rendered":"Reading Report: Late June 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><li>I finally finished <em>The Unfinished World <\/em>by Amber Sparks, which is a great relief, because how ironic the title would have been if the book had turned out to be an unfinished one! The short stories in this collection are not plot-driven, which is perhaps a weakness (for some readers), but they are beautiful, disturbing, haunting. I&#8217;m not sure what to do with the book. It&#8217;s a good one, worth keeping simply because the author has such a gift with words. But, I don&#8217;t expect that I&#8217;ll read it again. So, though it pains me, I think I will donate it. I have to keep reminding myself that books can be reacquired in a number of ways and that letting go of a book doesn&#8217;t mean that I will never see it again. Perhaps before donating it I will browse through it to find a few quotes to keep as mementos.<\/li><li>I am close now to having read all of Barbara Michaels&#8217;s novels and Agatha Christie&#8217;s major works (defined by me as &#8220;all of the Marples and Poirots plus the acclaimed standalone mysteries&#8221;). This gives me both a feeling of accomplishment and one of terror as I contemplate life with no new stories by these two favorite authors. To alleviate that terror, I started looking for new mysteries to read. The first one that I picked up was <em>Maisie Dobbs<\/em> by Jacqueline Winspear. It&#8217;s a quick read, and I&#8217;m almost done with it. At this point in the story, I would say that the book is flawed in its structure (it has a weak intro and a huge flashback in the middle), but I absolutely love Maisie Dobbs&#8217;s approach to life and to detective work, and I suspect that all will be forgiven by the end.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally finished The Unfinished World by Amber Sparks, which is a great relief, because how ironic the title would have been if the book had turned out to be an unfinished one! The short stories in this collection are &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=20418\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20418"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20418"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20434,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20418\/revisions\/20434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}