{"id":393,"date":"2008-07-01T23:13:01","date_gmt":"2008-07-02T04:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/?p=393"},"modified":"2008-07-03T10:04:12","modified_gmt":"2008-07-03T15:04:12","slug":"salman-rushdie-and-the-enchantress-of-florence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/salman-rushdie-and-the-enchantress-of-florence\/","title":{"rendered":"Salman Rushdie and The Enchantress of Florence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/rushdie.jpg' rel=\"lightbox[393]\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/rushdie.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"rushdie\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/rushdie.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/rushdie-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/bozweb-20\/detail\/0375504338\/104-0553807-9763937\"><img decoding=\"async\" style='float: left; margin: 10px 10px 0 0;' src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51zO0BOfsFL._SL210_.jpg\" alt=\"Enchantress of Florence\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I went to see Salman Rushdie give a reading from his latest book, <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/bozweb-20\/detail\/0375504338\/104-0553807-9763937\">The Enchantress of Florence<\/a> on Monday night (June 30).  The event was at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sixthandi.org\/\">Sixth and I Historic Synagogue<\/a> in Washington, DC (presented via <a href=\"http:\/\/politics-prose.com\/\">Politics and Prose Bookstore<\/a>).  Quite engaging speaker.  The event was sold out (you got free tix if you bought the book, as I did, at Politics and Prose) and I&#8217;d estimate  <strike>300<\/strike> 700 people were there.  After the talk he answered audience questions, and then he did a signing in the hall in the basement of the synagogue.  Long line, but they served refreshments so time passed fairly quickly.  <\/p>\n<p> I&#8217;ve read the book, and while I liked his prose very much (beautifully descriptive and evocative), I didn&#8217;t find that the book gelled.  Part history and part fantasy, it was often a blurry line between the two and hard to follow with any sense of cohesion.  But it was a quick read, and enjoyable if taken as a few loosely-coupled fables.  This was the first book I&#8217;d read by Sir Rushdie (he was recently knighted by the Queen), and I liked his prose enough that I will be going back and reading one or more of his other books.<\/p>\n<p>I video recorded the talk (the above is a still).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to see Salman Rushdie give a reading from his latest book, The Enchantress of Florence on Monday night (June 30). The event was at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC (presented via Politics and Prose Bookstore). Quite engaging speaker. The event was sold out (you got free tix if you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoodedhawk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}