{"id":750,"date":"2014-08-31T15:37:46","date_gmt":"2014-08-31T03:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=750"},"modified":"2022-01-30T10:07:18","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T21:07:18","slug":"the-house-of-mirth-edith-wharton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2014\/08\/31\/the-house-of-mirth-edith-wharton\/","title":{"rendered":"The House of Mirth — Edith Wharton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is a wonderful book. It immerses you into New York society a hundred or so years ago, a world where every social interaction is governed by intricate codes and strict, yet unwritten, rules. Lily Bart, the protagonist, is a consummate master of these rules, but will her extravagant tastes get the better of her and condemn her to a fate as an impoverished old maid? (Actually, I don’t know the answer yet: I’m only halfway through.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all sounds a bit Jane Austen, but Wharton’s prose seems to me to have a bit more steel in it, and her heroine is more morally ambiguous than, say, Elizabeth Bennet. There are many apposite metaphors, and a lot of insightful musing on human nature, apart from the engrossing plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have not actually been reading this book at all — instead it is being read to me by my phone, using an ebook reading app and a text-to-speech engine. As the book is now in the public domain, I downloaded it from the Project Gutenberg<\/a> website. I was inspired by Liraz Siri’s article on superfast audiobook listening<\/a>. I don’t plan to go as fast as he did, but the set-up he recommends (Moon Reader Pro<\/em>, Ivona<\/em> TTS engine, and the Amy UK<\/em> voice) works very nicely. Amy’s accent and intonation works perfectly for this story. The text-to-speech engine works amazingly well, even in a novel with a lot of dialogue. There’s one distracting gaffe though: Ivona pronounces Mrs Peniston’s name to rhyme with “venus ton” rather than “tennis ton”. The 9-year-old boy within me stifles a giggle every time he hears this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m looking forward to reading this book again, but with my eyes instead of my ears, just to see if it’s still as good.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a wonderful book. It immerses you into New York society a hundred or so years ago, a world where every social interaction is governed by intricate codes and strict, yet unwritten, rules. Lily Bart, the protagonist, is a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,65,63],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-books","tag-edith-wharton","tag-novels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4161,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/4161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}