{"id":1662,"date":"2011-09-01T21:05:27","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T21:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=1662"},"modified":"2011-09-01T21:05:27","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T21:05:27","slug":"book-log-the-astonishing-life-of-octavian-nothing-volume-1-pox-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=1662","title":{"rendered":"Book Log &#8211; The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: Pox Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: Pox Party<\/em> by M.T. Anderson<\/p>\n<p>If you came to this novel by way of M.T. Anderson&#8217;s <em>Whales on Stilts<\/em>, as I did, you would likely be surprised, but not necessarily disappointed.\u00a0 It&#8217;s like being tricked into reading something you wouldn&#8217;t seek out in the first place, and being pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n<p><em>Whales on Stilts<\/em> is silly, campy fun.\u00a0 <em>The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing<\/em> is dark.\u00a0 It was technically recommended to me because I like Neal Stephenson, not because I like M.T. Anderson.<\/p>\n<p>The is set during the beginnings of the American Revolution, through the eyes of a very peculiarly situated slave boy.\u00a0 He lives in an institute, sort of a misguided Royal Philosophers Society, as a living experiment.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a book of rich historical accuracy, like Stephenson&#8217;s <em>Baroque<\/em> trilogy, and it&#8217;s a smooth, if at times disturbing, read.<\/p>\n<p>The Pox Party itself, a several week party held to infect and immunize guests from the Pox, is best described by the author in the afternotes: &#8220;Like <em>The Breakfast Club<\/em>, but with more open sores.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I shall have to see what else this Mr. Anderson is up to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: Pox Party by M.T. Anderson If you came to this novel by way of M.T. Anderson&#8217;s Whales on Stilts, as I did, you would likely be surprised, but not necessarily disappointed.\u00a0 It&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=1662\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[481],"tags":[466],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-log","tag-book-log-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1664,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions\/1664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}