Recently Read: The Historian
Dec. 3rd, 2008 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellyssianIt's been quite a while since I posted any reviews; last night I went through a bunch of tools and other pieces of company equipment and posted reviews of them at Amazon.com
~ although they may or may not be useful items for those of you who aren't contractors, I'll still post them here! =)
Of course, this the last review I did, that's been hanging around for a while waiting for another review to bump it out of the holding pen, is on a work of fiction, so the disclaimer above just applies to things you'll be seeing over the next few days...
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
I liked this a lot. A very enjoyable read.
I'm thinking of how to write about the book without giving too much away...
It concerns - despite what the misleading title might state - several historians. Anthropologists and archaeologists also get in on the act.
It's about a girl who grows up over the course of the book, so it's a coming of age story.
It's about Vlad Dracul.
Yes, some of the thrills and twists and turns aren't all that much of a surprise, and much of my initial assessments of characters proved correct... except for those that weren't core members of the cast. The supporting folks seemed much less predictable in the long run, mostly because what you thought might happen should they become central to the story didn't.
Despite that knowing - or, rather, suspecting and then confirming - I still found myself wanting to read exactly how those suspicions unfolded.
Funny how when I was watching Alexander
the other day, the time shifts were driving me nuts. Here, it didn't happen - and there weas jumping around - mostly between two times and places, sometimes more - until pretty much the end of the book. Might just be that such things are handled more gracefully in the written word then they are on screen.
As with Stoker's Dracula
, this tale is told, in large part, through letters. Here, though, much of those letters are being told, from memory, by one character to another; beyond that, all these pieces are assembled and told by that other character to the reader. While I enjoyed this nested POV, I can see others being challenged or annoyed by it.
~ although they may or may not be useful items for those of you who aren't contractors, I'll still post them here! =)Of course, this the last review I did, that's been hanging around for a while waiting for another review to bump it out of the holding pen, is on a work of fiction, so the disclaimer above just applies to things you'll be seeing over the next few days...
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
I liked this a lot. A very enjoyable read.
I'm thinking of how to write about the book without giving too much away...
It concerns - despite what the misleading title might state - several historians. Anthropologists and archaeologists also get in on the act.
It's about a girl who grows up over the course of the book, so it's a coming of age story.
It's about Vlad Dracul.
Yes, some of the thrills and twists and turns aren't all that much of a surprise, and much of my initial assessments of characters proved correct... except for those that weren't core members of the cast. The supporting folks seemed much less predictable in the long run, mostly because what you thought might happen should they become central to the story didn't.
Despite that knowing - or, rather, suspecting and then confirming - I still found myself wanting to read exactly how those suspicions unfolded.
Funny how when I was watching Alexander
the other day, the time shifts were driving me nuts. Here, it didn't happen - and there weas jumping around - mostly between two times and places, sometimes more - until pretty much the end of the book. Might just be that such things are handled more gracefully in the written word then they are on screen.As with Stoker's Dracula
, this tale is told, in large part, through letters. Here, though, much of those letters are being told, from memory, by one character to another; beyond that, all these pieces are assembled and told by that other character to the reader. While I enjoyed this nested POV, I can see others being challenged or annoyed by it.