{"id":724,"date":"2013-08-19T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T20:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=724"},"modified":"2013-08-19T12:00:19","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T20:00:19","slug":"review-the-night-circus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/19\/review-the-night-circus\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Night Circus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The Night Circus<\/a> by Erin Morgenstern<\/a>
\n My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of you are going to absolutely love this book. I didn\u2019t, but then, that\u2019s just me. Read my other reviews, the things I\u2019m in to, you can probably figure you why this one wasn\u2019t exactly my cup of tea. I read it mostly because the title was intriguing, a book club I\u2019m in had read it before I joined, and it was immediately available at the library.<\/p>\n

The story\u2019s not bad, and the writing is consistent. It\u2019s languid, not quit torpid, (although to me it was). Sensuous, sensual, whatever. Although most of the imagery is, by force, black-and-white, Morgenstern paints a vivid picture.<\/p>\n

However, I might not have read the book if I had known how dreamy<\/i> it was going to be. It\u2019s call The Night Circus<\/i>, but the circus itself , in the novel, is called The Circus of Dreams. I can\u2019t stand reading about dreams. Not just that they\u2019re pointless, cop-outs used by writers who can\u2019t be bothered to stick to their own rules. Dreams are weird, grounded in nothing substantial or meaningful, completely alien\u2014and therefore boring\u2014to anyone except the original dreamer. Or, they\u2019re written about in a way so utterly unrealistic. No one knows why or how we dream, so how can any writer hope to relate dreams in a way that does anything except remind the reader she\u2019s immersed in artifice?<\/p>\n

That said, the dreaminess of the Night Circus<\/i> is not all that bad. Morgenstern offers up a cozy atmosphere, the kind that the \u201ccurl up around a good book\u201d type of reader will enjoy getting lost in. There were times when I was counting pages as I read, but others times when I was surprised how much I\u2019d gotten through.<\/p>\n

So, while I should give this book two stars, I\u2019m going to add one more out of respect for what Morgenstern has managed to construct\u2014a fantasy, an illusion held together as much by the reader\u2019s willing complicity as by tricks of light and word choice. Just like the circus itself.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern My rating: 3 of 5 stars Some of you are going to absolutely love this book. I didn\u2019t, but then, that\u2019s just me. Read my other reviews, the things I\u2019m in to, you can probably figure you why this one wasn\u2019t exactly my cup of tea. I read it … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The Night Circus”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-bG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}