{"id":4695,"date":"2011-09-15T08:30:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T12:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=4695"},"modified":"2011-09-15T21:43:51","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T01:43:51","slug":"and-now-for-something-completely-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=4695","title":{"rendered":"And Now For Something Completely Different"},"content":{"rendered":"

Portuguese Irregular Verbs (A Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainment) <\/em>by Alexander McCall Smith<\/strong>
\nGrade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexander McCall Smith is most famous for his mystery series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency<\/em>. Portuguese Irregular Verbs <\/em>is apparently quite different from the books of that series. It is not a mystery, but rather a collection of short stories about Dr von Igelfeld, German professor of philology, fool at large.<\/p>\n

The book starts out strongly with a story about von Igelfeld and two of his colleagues. They decide to play a game of tennis though none of them has played before. Indeed, none of them is typically inclined to any kind of athleticism, but as von Igelfeld says,<\/p>\n

That’s no reason not to play. . . . Tennis, like any activity, can be mastered if one knows the principles behind it. In that respect it must be like language. The understanding of simple rules produces an understanding of a language. What could be simpler?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So they locate an old rulebook and, having absorbed the rules, two play while the third keeps score. Unfortunately, neither player can mange a proper serve and, according to the rules, the match must continue until a lead of at least two games is established, which is never going to happen. Von Igelfeld says,<\/p>\n

This is quite ridiculous. . . . A game must have a winner—everybody knows that—and yet this . . . this stupid<\/em> book makes no provision for moderate<\/em> players like ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They all agree to quit, and off they go to take a refreshing swim, even though none of them has ever tried swimming before….<\/p>\n

If all of the stories were this funny, I would have given Portuguese Irregular Verbs<\/em> an A+ and a glowing review. However, the stories seem almost to be arranged by quality, from best to worst. By the time I reached the end of the book, I’d had quite enough of von Igelfeld and his travels. So I half-recommend it, or recommend half of it, whichever way you want to look at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Portuguese Irregular Verbs (A Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainment) by Alexander McCall Smith Grade: B+ Alexander McCall Smith is most famous for his mystery series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Portuguese Irregular Verbs is apparently quite different from the … Continue reading →<\/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\/4695"}],"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=4695"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4708,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions\/4708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}