Heh...I guess I don't visit this thread much....deer of the dawn wrote:Iain Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost.
First of all, the title. What on earth does that even mean? It says nothing, nothing about the book or the characters!!
It's one of the best books ever.
Umm...on the first, it does say something about the book, though.
Fun instance [and slightly fingerpost-y, in its way] on how I ended up reading this thing---
My wife slammed it down on the bedside table OPEN! Now, she is the sort that worries about damaging the spines of travel magazines on airplanes and folding page corners down in furniture assembly instructions.
So that was a bit of a startle, and I leaned up and over to read the title, and said "Someone's quoting Bacon? I'll take a look at that."
On the second, it's got some interesting stuff going on...but I'm not sure I'd rank it even in the top ten of a list of "Books with Bacon Quotes."
But, in keeping with theme of the thread, there is a book "Possession" by Byatt. Basically Romance Among Those That are the Kind of People That Make Normal People Believe English Lit People Are Pompous Clueless Puffballs.
It's 85% not my thing at all...and the other 15% is "Shit That's EVery Bit as Annoying as Atlas Shrugged [ but for opposite reasons. ]
Yet I keep going back to it.
Sky---I like some Barker, and not other.
I enjoyed Imajica a lot---and then it had an ending that was worse than if you took the end of the Dark Tower series and had it re-written by the guys who wrote the ending of Lost, then used the pages to line a cat's litter box till it was good and ripe.