{"id":5789,"date":"2025-03-26T17:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T17:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/?p=5789"},"modified":"2025-03-26T17:59:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T17:59:18","slug":"blood-test-by-charles-baxter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/blood-test-by-charles-baxter\/","title":{"rendered":"<B>Blood Test<\/B> by Charles Baxter."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/208430621-blood-test\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1713544563l\/208430621._SX98_.jpg\" alt=\"Blood Test: A Comedy\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/208430621-blood-test\">Blood Test: A Comedy<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/45531.Charles_Baxter\">Charles Baxter<\/a><br \/>\nMy rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/7437131701\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Brock Hobson is a mild-mannered insurance broker and Sunday school teacher. He makes an impulse buy of a blood test that will allegedly tell him what the future holds for him based on his DNA, and his questionnaire. It says he will commit a felony. He scoffs, but he suddenly feels empowered to commit a crime. He buys a handgun. Things get more serious after that. His ex-wife Cheryl is shacking up with a musclebound lout who calls Brock and Cheryl&#8217;s son a homophobic slur. Violence appears in the offing. That&#8217;s about as far as I go into the plot without spoilers, but this really isn&#8217;t a plot-heavy book. It&#8217;s supposed to be a comedy. Kirkus reviews calls it &#8220;riotously funny&#8221; which is funnier than anything in the book. Another reviewer calls it wry. I&#8217;ll buy wry and add tongue-in-cheek. That&#8217;s enough to get three stars, but it was less than riveting and had a lot of filler. It was mildly amusing and filled in some time, so I&#8217;m not really complaining.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/12975428-russell-atkinson\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blood Test: A Comedy by Charles Baxter My rating: 3 of 5 stars Brock Hobson is a mild-mannered insurance broker and Sunday school teacher. He makes an impulse buy of a blood test that will allegedly tell him what the future holds for him based on his DNA, and his questionnaire. It says he will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Blood Test by Charles Baxter. - OnWords<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/blood-test-by-charles-baxter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blood Test by Charles Baxter. - OnWords\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Blood Test: A Comedy by Charles Baxter My rating: 3 of 5 stars Brock Hobson is a mild-mannered insurance broker and Sunday school teacher. He makes an impulse buy of a blood test that will allegedly tell him what the future holds for him based on his DNA, and his questionnaire. 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