{"id":61,"date":"2009-09-15T12:49:04","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T12:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=61"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:21:51","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:21:51","slug":"mightier-than-the-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"Mightier than the Sword"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>Mightier than the Sword <\/em> by Tom Holt<\/h3>\n<p>Thirteen attended this discussion at the Milwood Library.  Our topic, <em>Mightier than the Sword,<\/em> was an omnibus of two Tom Holt humorous  fantasy novels: <em>Who\u2019s Afraid of Beowulf?<\/em> and <em>My Hero<\/em>.  The first book involves  enchanted Norse heroes being awakened after a  long sleep by archaeologists in  the 20th century. The second book  concerns a writer whose book takes  on a life of its own. Eight of us  had read Holt\u2019s work before. Eight started  this book, four finished the  first novel, and two finished both novels.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us liked this book. We enjoyed reading about normal   people being <!--more-->confronted with surreal mythical characters and  situations, and  the matter-of-fact way they handled it.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone commented that Holt\u2019s humor was different from  other  humor writers we\u2019d read before like Terry Pratchett and John  Moore, and it took  a while to get into the right mindset to enjoy  Holt\u2019s surreal brand of funny  business.\u00a0 One person said that Holt   requires more of the reader then many other writers do. Another noted  that this  book had long sentences and could not be read quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Two members of our group did not enjoy the book. One said it   \u201cdid not do much\u201d for him. Another felt that Holt kept the reader so  distant  from his characters that it was hard to like them.<\/p>\n<p>Those of us who finished both novels in this volume  generally preferred the second book, <em>My  Hero, <\/em>which  was written much later. These readers felt the story moved  faster and  was more focused. One person particularly enjoyed the scene  involving a  gunfight in <em>Pride and  Prejudice.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Near the end of the meeting, we discussed other humor   writers we enjoyed. British writers mentioned were Jasper Fforde,  Terry  Pratchett, Robert Rankin, Martin Scott, and Ben Elton. The  American writers  named were Connie Willis, H. Beam Piper, Eric Frank  Russell, Neal Stephenson,  and Rudy Rucker.<\/p>\n<p>After our discussion ended, many of us had dinner at Mangia  Pizza.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212;A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mightier than the Sword by Tom Holt Thirteen attended this discussion at the Milwood Library. Our topic, Mightier than the Sword, was an omnibus of two Tom Holt humorous fantasy novels: Who\u2019s Afraid of Beowulf? and My Hero. The first book involves enchanted Norse heroes being awakened after a long sleep by archaeologists in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}