{"id":5661,"date":"2020-10-23T09:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=5661"},"modified":"2020-10-23T09:00:29","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T14:00:29","slug":"spooky-reads-recommendation-lincoln-in-the-bardo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=5661","title":{"rendered":"Spooky Reads Recommendation: \u201cLincoln in the Bardo\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Jasey Roberts<\/em><\/p>\n

Author George Saunders was introduced on \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d as \u201cquite possibly our greatest living author.\u201d With his famous dry wit, Saunders immediately asked Colbert in a fake-snide voice, \u201cYou said \u2018quite possibly\u2019?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Saunders described that, when he became sick of trying to be Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver and finally decided to write like himself, he felt that he \u201chad been getting his ass kicked in an alley somewhere and only just realized he had an arm tied behind (his) back.\u201d He released his first novel in early 2017 called \u201cLincoln in the Bardo,\u201d which made waves in the literary community and earned Saunders himself a Man Booker, making him the second American ever to win the award. He is also a MacArthur Genius fellow and is considered by many to be a master of the short story form, which makes his choice to finally write a novel surprising to many.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLincoln in the Bardo\u201d is, first and foremost, a ghost story, which makes it a perfect book to read in the remaining days of spooky season. It takes place during the height of the American Civil War \u2013 and Abraham Lincoln\u2019s youngest and favorite son, Willie, dies suddenly from typhoid. Washington legend has it that when they buried Willie in the tomb in Oak Hill Cemetery, the president returned on several occasions late at night to open the crypt and weep over his son\u2019s dead body.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sounds like a riot, right? But Saunders takes this local legend and morphs it into a tale of his own creation. \u201cLincoln in the Bardo\u201d takes place entirely on one of the nights that Lincoln visits Oak Hill, but it is narrated from the perspective of the various ghosts that inhabit the graveyard. This is where the book gets truly interesting – it isn\u2019t really about Abraham Lincoln, but about America and its history.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cast of ghosts in this book is so huge and diverse that the voice cast for the audiobook has over 160 different people, each of them representing the many souls and voices that built America. Audible users will enjoy narration from Nick Offerman, Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon, Bill Hader, Rainn Wilson, Ben Stiller, Keegan-Michael Key, Kat Dennings, David Sedaris, Jeffrey Tambor, Jeff Tweedy, as well as Saunders himself and many members of his family.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if you don\u2019t like audiobooks, the book itself is chock full of inappropriate jokes, soul-crushingly tender moments, and heart-poundingly triumphant ones. It also, surprise-surprise, very weird and very silly, which is part of Saunders\u2019 MO. Take that, Hemingway! <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Jasey Roberts Author George Saunders was introduced on \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d as \u201cquite possibly our greatest living author.\u201d With his famous dry wit, Saunders immediately asked Colbert in a fake-snide voice, \u201cYou said \u2018quite possibly\u2019?\u201d Saunders described that, when he became sick of trying to be Ernest Hemingway and Raymond…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-5661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-summer2019"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Pic-for-Spooky-Reads-Lincoln-in-the-Bardo-article.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}