{"id":6648,"date":"2012-11-07T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=6648"},"modified":"2012-11-05T23:33:15","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T03:33:15","slug":"that-was-then-this-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=6648","title":{"rendered":"That Was Then, This Is Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>The Way We Talk Now: Commentaries on Language and Culture from NPR&#8217;s &#8220;Fresh Air&#8221; <\/em>by Geoffrey Nunberg<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The short essays in <em>The Way We Talk Now<\/em> ought to have been perfect for me, given my interest in language and the fact that my reading time is so fractured these days. I didn&#8217;t particularly enjoy them, though. At times I had to force myself to continue, and that seemed odd. Some of the topics were interesting, and Nunberg is certainly a capable writer. And funny. In one essay, he was theorizing where a certain annoying saying might have come from, and he wrote, &#8220;But actually I don&#8217;t know that it matters much just which shipment of fruit this bug came in with.&#8221; That gave me a good giggle.<\/p>\n<p>So why didn&#8217;t I enjoy this book more? My guess is that the essays are simply too old. They&#8217;re supposed to be about &#8220;the way we talk now,&#8221; but they date from 1989 to 2001, so even the most recent ones are over ten years old. What was new and hip back then is now old, perhaps a bit trite, and maybe even irrelevant. I don&#8217;t know, but I didn&#8217;t enjoy the book much, so I can&#8217;t recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Way We Talk Now: Commentaries on Language and Culture from NPR&#8217;s &#8220;Fresh Air&#8221; by Geoffrey Nunberg Grade: B The short essays in The Way We Talk Now ought to have been perfect for me, given my interest in language &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=6648\">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\/6648"}],"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=6648"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6651,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6648\/revisions\/6651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}