{"id":10239,"date":"2011-01-31T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=10239"},"modified":"2011-01-24T10:22:19","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T16:22:19","slug":"the-imperfectionists-by-tom-rachman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/the-imperfectionists-by-tom-rachman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Imperfectionists<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Tom Rachman is a series of narratives by\u00a0different people affiliated with\u00a0a newspaper in Rome.\u00a0 Each odd-numbered\u00a0chapter is told by a different character,\u00a0like struggling freelance writer Lloyd, hated CFO Abbey, and longtime reader Ornella.\u00a0 The even-numbered chapters are devoted to the history of the newspaper, starting with its founding by\u00a0millionaire Cyrus Ott and ending with its downfall in the current Internet age due to declining readership.<\/p>\n

My big complaint about the book is that because it is subtitled “A Novel”, I was expecting a novel.\u00a0 But what we get is individual chapters that tell the stories of different characters, and those characters’ lives\u00a0don’t really intersect except that they all happen to work at the same newspaper.\u00a0 Because of this, it feels much more like a collection of short stories, which I’m not uaually a fan of.\u00a0 That’s not to say that this book isn’t well done, it just wasn’t what I was expecting.\u00a0 If you’re interested in the topic and\u00a0like short stories, you should give\u00a0it a try.\u00a0 There are\u00a0aspects of it that\u00a0I really did enjoy, especially seeing the history of the paper unfold throughout the book.\u00a0\u00a0At its heart, The Imperfectionists<\/a><\/em><\/strong> is\u00a0a book about people trying to get by despite the fact that their careers seem doomed.\u00a0 It seems especially\u00a0relevant when we hear so much today about print journalism going by the wayside in favor of getting our information online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman is a series of narratives by\u00a0different people affiliated with\u00a0a newspaper in Rome.\u00a0 Each odd-numbered\u00a0chapter is told by a different character,\u00a0like struggling freelance writer Lloyd, hated CFO Abbey, and longtime reader Ornella.\u00a0 The even-numbered chapters are devoted to the history of the newspaper, starting with its[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[701,1106,668],"class_list":["post-10239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-journalists","tag-newspapers","tag-working-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-2F9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10239"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10293,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10239\/revisions\/10293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}