{"id":313,"date":"2008-03-12T11:41:58","date_gmt":"2008-03-12T16:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=313"},"modified":"2008-03-12T11:41:58","modified_gmt":"2008-03-12T16:41:58","slug":"theres-no-accounting-for-taste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"There's No Accounting for Taste"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among other birthday gifts this year, I received The Best American Short Stories 2007<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I haven’t started yet.<\/p>\n

But I have read a lot of the “Reviews” by customers on amazon.com, and they remind me that you just can’t trust other people’s opinions. In order to even come close, you have to find a reviewer whose taste you trust, then go with it.<\/p>\n

Some samples:<\/p>\n

—
\n“First of all the stories by… Gay… Munro, Pollack, Russo… should not have been included under any circumstances. They we’re quite bad.”<\/p>\n

vs.<\/p>\n

“Among the best stories are Alice Munro’s… Eileen Pollack’s… William Gay’s… and Richard Russo’s….
\n—<\/p>\n

—
\n“L. DeBard and Aliette grinds on and on in a fragmented attempt to be “literary” but, even with a token castration thrown in, ends up being tedious and, frankly, pretentious.”<\/p>\n

vs.<\/p>\n

“Oh man, you’ve got to read: L. Debard and Aliette: A Love Story by Lauren Groff. Grade-A A bizarre love story circa the flu epidemic of 1918. It’s enjoyably twisted and includes a castration scene.”
\n—<\/p>\n

Can’t wait to dig in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among other birthday gifts this year, I received The Best American Short Stories 2007. I haven’t started yet. But I have read a lot of the “Reviews” by customers on amazon.com, and they remind me that you just can’t trust other people’s opinions. In order to even come close, you have to find a reviewer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagelit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}