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Today I have to attend an online class thingy at work which runs from 3PM to 5PM, so had to change my schedule for that. I thought that would mean I could sleep in, but with anxiety dreams, my guts acting up (which might be connected), being too hot under the winter quilt, and 'the kids' traipsing around the house, that last hour was not all that good. Not very effective sleep. So, book review time! I found this book my friend lent me completely fascinating and could do little else but read it for about two weeks. And now I sort of feel as if there's a hole in my life. You know that letdown after you finish a consuming book and it's not there for you anymore? I don't need the question mark on the end of that sentence, I know you know it.
Something which weighed lightly (for me) on the annoying side was that quite often he didn't explain terms and names and left the reader floundering a little. After multiple references within the book I'm making a complete guess that the title is a reference in Chinese culture meaning something like the years when one is very involved with the business of life. The story concerns portions of the lives of a few members of a cohort of souls as they are reincarnated over a span of a thousand years or so in an alternate Earth where most of Europe was wiped out by the Black Plague. For convenience, to make it a tiny bit easier to follow who's who, they are given names that start with the same letter in each life. (At the very end of the book he kind of over-exposes his own conceit in a weird almost breaking of the fourth wall.)
It's almost like reading a story where the whole cast are Time Lords - each person has some core characteristics, but their entire outsides may change, and of course the part of their life which your concerned with in the story may be at a different point. You start and end with B as an older man, but they go back and forth between being male and female. B is Heart, I is Brain, K is Leader. S was the bad guy, and varied between thoughtless to downright horrific. I think T was the Artist and P was Adventurer, but I'm not positive as they didn't really get the limelight much. Maybe when I read it over, someday, I'll figure them out. I might have to buy my own copy. OTOH I might have to make sure the library buys a copy, because I think this is something it would do people good to be exposed to, especially with the current fervor against Islam.
He cleared the stage of Christianity before the first chapter with the Plague and let the cultures which have, in this universe, been overshadowed by Europe and Christianity, just fight it out. So it's all about Islam and Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, nature religions, and how they all manifest in different cultures and in conflict or harmony with each other. And I hope to heck he really knew what he was talking about, that he did his homework, because I know I'm going to be taking some of these thoughts and applying them in my classes at work, when I have to disabuse students of the notion that all Muslims are a problem. (Yes, that is unfortunately something I have to do on a regular basis.)
Okay, then, probably time for me to start getting ready for work. :) We got that last stupid mega-push of a class cleaned up, got back to the yearly testing, and now we have another small presentation we've going to have to do for everyone, which is annoying to me because it's not a training. It's literally telling people how to do their jobs, even down to where they can stand, which I feel is in no way our alley.
Something which weighed lightly (for me) on the annoying side was that quite often he didn't explain terms and names and left the reader floundering a little. After multiple references within the book I'm making a complete guess that the title is a reference in Chinese culture meaning something like the years when one is very involved with the business of life. The story concerns portions of the lives of a few members of a cohort of souls as they are reincarnated over a span of a thousand years or so in an alternate Earth where most of Europe was wiped out by the Black Plague. For convenience, to make it a tiny bit easier to follow who's who, they are given names that start with the same letter in each life. (At the very end of the book he kind of over-exposes his own conceit in a weird almost breaking of the fourth wall.)
It's almost like reading a story where the whole cast are Time Lords - each person has some core characteristics, but their entire outsides may change, and of course the part of their life which your concerned with in the story may be at a different point. You start and end with B as an older man, but they go back and forth between being male and female. B is Heart, I is Brain, K is Leader. S was the bad guy, and varied between thoughtless to downright horrific. I think T was the Artist and P was Adventurer, but I'm not positive as they didn't really get the limelight much. Maybe when I read it over, someday, I'll figure them out. I might have to buy my own copy. OTOH I might have to make sure the library buys a copy, because I think this is something it would do people good to be exposed to, especially with the current fervor against Islam.
He cleared the stage of Christianity before the first chapter with the Plague and let the cultures which have, in this universe, been overshadowed by Europe and Christianity, just fight it out. So it's all about Islam and Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, nature religions, and how they all manifest in different cultures and in conflict or harmony with each other. And I hope to heck he really knew what he was talking about, that he did his homework, because I know I'm going to be taking some of these thoughts and applying them in my classes at work, when I have to disabuse students of the notion that all Muslims are a problem. (Yes, that is unfortunately something I have to do on a regular basis.)
Okay, then, probably time for me to start getting ready for work. :) We got that last stupid mega-push of a class cleaned up, got back to the yearly testing, and now we have another small presentation we've going to have to do for everyone, which is annoying to me because it's not a training. It's literally telling people how to do their jobs, even down to where they can stand, which I feel is in no way our alley.