{"id":1235,"date":"2006-06-05T22:36:17","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T22:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1235"},"modified":"2006-06-05T22:36:17","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T22:36:17","slug":"critic_at_large_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1235","title":{"rendered":"Critic At Large: Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like snowflakes, no two days in a human life are exactly alike.  While most of our days seem to fade into our respective pasts in a monochromatic blur of routine and habit, each day is singular.  Ian McEwan’s Saturday<\/A> is a recounting of a singular day in the life of one man, Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon living in London.  The book follows Henry through the entire course of a singular Saturday in his life.  In many ways, his Saturday is mundane; it could be the Saturday of any affluent, urban-dwelling professional.  He plays squash, he visits his elderly mother at a nursing home, he goes shopping for dinner.  But a few small but important events transpire that ultimately stand apart this Saturday from all others.  Set against the backdrop of the buildup to the Iraq war, McEwan gracefully chronicles Perowne’s constant inner dialogue, which fluidly shifts from present to past, from memory to anticipation.  The book reminds us that it is the random, unpredictable moments, blazing across the horizon of our existence like a comet, that make life both sublime and horrifying. <\/DIV>
 <\/DIV>
Next up: George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in his A Song of Fire and Ice opus.  At more than 700 pages, I’m going to have to exercise some serious discipline to finish this book in a reasonable amount of time.  It’s been nearly three years since I read the last book in the series, but the chapter synopses over at Tower of the Hand<\/A> are proving very helpful.  <\/DIV>
 <\/DIV>
What books are on your summer reading lists?  <\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like snowflakes, no two days in a human life are exactly alike.  While most of our days seem to fade into our respective pasts in a monochromatic blur of routine and habit, each day is singular.  Ian McEwan’s Saturday is a recounting of a singular day in the life of one man, Henry Perowne, a […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-jV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}