(by Jeanette Winterson)<\/p>\n
This book is partly a memoir, partly a work of literary criticism, partly a reflection on the world and its problems, and partly a retelling of some of the stories from One Thousand and One Nights<\/em>. I think the retellings were my favorite aspect of the book, though there were other things I liked as well. A lot of this book is about how stories work and how they can change us; if you read Winterson’s memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?<\/em>, the parts about how books expanded her world and changed her life will be familiar (not in a bad way!). I like Winterson’s descriptions of the character of Shahrazad and the structure of the Nights<\/em>, with “every story opening into another story.” I like how Winterson talks about the stories in the Nights<\/em> as “tales of chance, mischance, second chances, good luck and bad,” where “chance encounters with others” are always key to what happens next. And I really like what Winterson writes about noticing\/seeing, how encounters with art can make us stop and really see<\/em> something in ways we may not always, and how love does the same thing, and how those acts of noticing\/seeing can get us out of mental ruts and open us up to possibility, and how stories, too, open us up, because through them “we can imagine other outcomes.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (by Jeanette Winterson) This book is partly a memoir, partly a work of literary criticism, partly a reflection on the world and its problems, and partly a retelling of some of the stories from One Thousand and One Nights. I think the retellings were my favorite aspect of the book, though there were other things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14299"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14313,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14299\/revisions\/14313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}