{"id":7509,"date":"2014-03-28T20:38:57","date_gmt":"2014-03-28T20:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=7509"},"modified":"2014-03-28T20:38:57","modified_gmt":"2014-03-28T20:38:57","slug":"whit-and-all-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/whit-and-all-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Whit and all that"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm-eu.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;t=thewidblo-21&#038;o=2&#038;p=8&#038;l=as4&#038;m=amazon&#038;f=ifr&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;asins=0349139172\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"right\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>When <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Iain_Banks\">Iain Banks<\/a> died, Phyllis and I realised that we had never actually got round to reading anything by him.  We decided to order a few of his books to rectify this issue.<\/p>\n<p>Since then I&#8217;ve read <i>Consider Phlebas<\/i>, <i>The Wasp Factory<\/i>, <i>Complicity<\/i> and <i>Whit<\/i> (in that order).<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t like <i>Consider Phlebas<\/i> at all, I must admit.  I love some science fiction novels, but not all, and this was definitely in the latter category (together with for instance the Red\/Green\/Blue Mars trilogy and Doris Lessing&#8217;s <i>Canopus in Argos<\/i> books).<\/p>\n<p>I then turned to Banks&#8217;s non-SF books.  <i>The Wasp Factory<\/i> wasn&#8217;t at all what I had expected, but it was rather enjoyable in its own way, and it definitely made me want to read more of his books.  <i>Complicity<\/i> was good, too, although surprisingly different.<\/p>\n<p>However, in my opinion <i>Whit<\/i> is far superior.  It&#8217;s a book about a small religious sect in Scotland, seen through the eyes of the founder&#8217;s granddaughter.  The religion was invented by Iain Banks and he manages to make it very believable, which is no mean feat.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it&#8217;s just my upbringing as the son of two theologians, but my main complaint about this wonderful book is that at 450 pages it is far too short. I thoroughly recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Iain Banks died, Phyllis and I realised that we had never actually got round to reading anything by him. We decided to order a few of his books to rectify this issue. Since then I&#8217;ve read Consider Phlebas, The Wasp Factory, Complicity and Whit (in that order). I didn&#8217;t like Consider Phlebas at all, I must admit. I love some science fiction novels, but not all, and this was definitely in the latter category (together with for instance the Red\/Green\/Blue Mars trilogy and Doris Lessing&#8217;s Canopus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,134,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-religion","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}