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Household Gods by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove. A woman wishes
to be transported to the Roman Empire, and is. She must learn to survive
and function, and fight her own political correctness, which at times
gets intrusive (to the reader). Even more fascinating is how she copes
when she gets back. Life's problems don't seem so great.
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Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal by Gore
Vidal. Time travel enables people to visit biblical times. Timothy turns
out to be the only guy whose writing is safe from the Hacker, who turns
out to be Jesus, in the future, rewriting history. Confusing to follow,
but a fascinating philosophy about historiography. How does history get
written? How does it get retold?
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Timeline by Michael Crichton. Less obvious than many of his other
books. A company develops a time machine (really parallel universes) and
sends some historians back to the middle ages in France, where they escape
one death threat after another. Like always, Crichton's science and history
are detailed and impeccable. Like always, it reads like a screenplay.
A real page turner with nice detail. Can't wait for the movie.
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Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Wasn't as difficult as I expected,
based on Eco's other books. Interesting debates about monks' love of learning
and books versus their faith. A series of deaths in an Abbey is all connected
to that dilemma. The 'hero' - William - a sort of 14th century Sherlock
Holmes. Of course I liked the parts about the labyrinth and the library.
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Perfume by Patrick Suskind, translated by John E. Woods. A boy
in Pre-Revolutionary France with essentially a super-human sense of smell
turns to murder to try to gather the scent of the soul of a virgin. Nice
sensory impressions of the time period.
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An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. Restoration England.
The same story of a murder told from four points of view. You get the
idea of different class lives during the time.
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The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. This one of the best
books I've ever read. It won the Booker Prize. An Indian family and Untouchables.
The mother has an affair with one - it ruins the family. Roy presents
all the aftermath first, we get the big events last. Beautiful writing.
The language becomes remarkably easy to follow. Not historical really,
but an excellent portrait of a culture very alien to most of us.
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The Memory Cathedral by Jack Dann. Subtitled A Secret History
of Leonardo Da Vinci, this is a fictionalized account of a year of Leonardo's
life. What if his flying machine had worked? Where did he go in that year
we know nothing about? Although it's fiction, it contains a pretty good
characterization of 16th century Italian life.