{"id":1516,"date":"2020-08-16T14:39:40","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T21:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/2020\/08\/16\/the-midnights-children-meander-week-one\/"},"modified":"2020-08-16T14:39:40","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T21:39:40","slug":"the-midnights-children-meander-week-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/2020\/08\/16\/the-midnights-children-meander-week-one\/","title":{"rendered":"The Midnight&#8217;s Children Meander: Week One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Greetings! Explanations follow. But first, <strong>a confession<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been afraid of <em>Midnight&#8217;s Children<\/em> for three decades. It was assigned to me in college. I never read it. And it has been staring at me balefully ever since. Like, completely full of bale.<\/p>\n<p>So it was that out of fear, I cheated &#8212; cracking open the cover ahead of time yesterday afternoon. And hell if the first several pages weren&#8217;t a blast. Yes friends, I&#8217;m here to report &#8212; there was joy, not terror! A few new-to-me words. <em>Tussock! Cheroot!<\/em> But Rushdie sure can write. I&#8217;m not scared now, I&#8217;m stoked.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the <strong>eerie close-coincidence of timing revealed in the second sentence?<\/strong> Unplanned! Spooky! Delightful! Affirmation, perhaps, that this is the book we&#8217;re supposed to be reading right now. And that I was supposed to cheat and start a day early. Phew!<\/p>\n<p>In case you&#8217;re embarking on your first Meander, or you&#8217;re considering embarking on your first Meander, here&#8217;s <strong>an explanation<\/strong> in brief of what&#8217;s about to happen:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Each Sunday<\/strong> I&#8217;ll letcha know the weekly target in a post on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cecilvortex.com\/\">ye olde blog (see below for an example)<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>By the following Saturday <\/strong>you&#8217;ll aim to read that section &#8212; usually around 50 pages or so, letting us know you&#8217;re meandering by posting a comment on that week&#8217;s thread.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Are there prizes? <\/strong>Of course there are prizes! Comment each week, finish the book on time, and you&#8217;ll win a genuine magnet-sized collectible (it attracts, it adheres, it astonishes).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s how it works.<\/p>\n<p>Now some people will tell you that you can&#8217;t do it. That you aren&#8217;t up to the challenge. But if I may offer a modest counterpoint:<\/p>\n<p>I have peered deep into your soul. I&#8217;ve witnessed that spark of the eternal that you uniquely possess. And I&#8217;m pretty sure you can do this. I like your odds, is what I&#8217;m saying. I believe in you and your Meander-ability. And I&#8217;m very glad to have your company as we take to the road, reading <em>Midnight&#8217;s Children<\/em> en masse, trying not to trip despite reading and walking at the same time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So what&#8217;s next?<\/strong> The aforementioned target! Let\u2019s meet up at the end of &#8220;Hit-the-Spittoon (pg. 52 in the Random House paperback) where, in some confusion, someone&#8217;s asking &#8220;is he going to be your father?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><strong>And this here?<\/strong> This is the post for comments on MC: Book 1.1 through Book 1.3.<\/p>\n<p><em>Oh, and also\/lastly:<\/em> A <strong>tussock<\/strong> is &#8220;a compact tuft especially of grass or sedge.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/\">Merriam-Webster<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greetings! Explanations follow. But first, a confession: I&#8217;ve been afraid of Midnight&#8217;s Children for three decades. It was assigned to me in college. I never read it. And it has been staring at me balefully ever since. Like, completely full of bale. So it was that out of fear, I cheated &#8212; cracking open the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meander"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}