by Iain Pears
bookshelves: archaeology, ancient-history, books-about-books-and-book-shops, conflagration, france, historical-fiction, medieval5c-16c, one-penny-wonder, philosophy, plague-disease, published-2002, teh-brillianz, wwii, war, time-slip, spring-2010, mystery-thriller, italy, art-forms Read from April...
I suppress a wince any time someone recommends historical fiction to me. For the most part the genre is cluttered with loud, earnest characters talking about that fine young Mr. Lincoln with all those ideas! From the books aimed at children and young adults, to those door-stoppers for beach vacation...
I'm sure this is Important and full of Deep Thoughts, but it was so damn boring I couldn't finish. I really liked An Instance of the Fingerpost, but this one lost me
A few items of note: Manlius, ugh. I hated everything about this section, starting off with the name MANLIUS, and it took every ounce of concentration to get through this whole story line. I understand it is important and integral to the story and whatever but whenever I read anything with people ta...
The Book Report: Pears explores well-trodden ground here...what is love, how does love cause us to act outside our own best interests, what does loyalty mean in the end, what relationship does the world have to the divine...through the lives and acts of three men widely separated in time, though uni...
Okay - here we go...at last...yumski!Julien Barneuve died at 3.28 on the afternoon of 18 August 1943.Note to self - contrast Sophia's tale of those that sit on the fence with Julien's predicament with Marcel(p 204) with Dante's first circleWhat a 'gulp' moment when Julia discovers Pisano's art (p 26...
A tangled web of three interconnected stories with a central theme of finding love in the face of death and chaos and of doing what is right. Manlius must decide whose side to be on as the Roman Empire falls. Olivier de Noyen is a young man in the wrong place at the wrong time during the spread of t...
Like probably nothing else, the breakdown of social order forces us to reach into ourselves, to draw for guidance on our innermost beliefs and moral values; for absent direction by the established rules of society, we only have ourselves to turn to for advice. – Such is the situation in which find t...
Much more serious – and much slower going than Pears' art history mysteries; unlike those, this book definitely has literary aspirations. The Dream of Scipio actually tells three different stories, (slightly) intertwined by the device of a philosophical manuscript influenced by Cicero, and by the th...
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