{"id":3130,"date":"2005-09-12T15:03:46","date_gmt":"2005-09-12T19:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/09\/12\/3130.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:53:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:53:05","slug":"book-report-forfeit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/09\/12\/book-report-forfeit\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Forfeit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One thing about enjoying an occasional re-read of Dick Francis books is that when one&#8217;s personal stash is in boxes, the library is bound to have plenty of others. I picked up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguinputnam.com\/nf\/Book\/BookDisplay\/0,,0_0425201910,00.html\">Forfeit<\/a> because I don&#8217;t own a copy and it had been a long time since I read it. Not a bad choice, as it turns out, because although it isn&#8217;t one of Mr. Francis&#8217;s best, it is reasonably good, and has a lot of Early Dick Francis stuff that is interesting from thirty-five years on.\n<p>The hero is clearly a Dick Francis hero; he gets beaten and bruised and drunk and keeps going. Considering how many people think of horseracing, it&#8217;s perhaps worth mentioning that the Dick Francis hero is almost never swift, but rather wins through sheer endurance. Of course, steeplechases are insanely long when compared to flat races. I doubt there&#8217;s anything really there, but it occurred to me as a metaphor. Anyway, one thing I found totally bizarre about this 1969 book is that it ends with the hero and his paraplegic wife agreeing to a sort of open marriage. Well, with the wife agreeing that it&#8217;s OK for the hero to take a mistress, and the hero taking a mistress. I suppose in 1969 it seemed possible for that to be a happily-ever-after ending, but I notice that sort of thing doesn&#8217;t keep happening in the later books.\n<p><I>chazak, chazak, v&#8217;nitchazek<\/I>,<br>-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing about enjoying an occasional re-read of Dick Francis books is that when one\u2019s personal stash is in boxes, the library is bound to have plenty of others. I picked up Forfeit because I don\u2019t own a copy and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17521,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3130\/revisions\/17521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}