Search - The Geographer's Library

Strange. Every other chapter is about a newspaper reporter trying to write an obit for a mysterious college professor. The other chapters are wild histories of fantastic mystical objects. Back and forth, back and forth... you're kept wondering why did the guy die and why are we forced to read about certain antiques. I finally gave up on the historical chapters and read about the reporter's journey. Somewhat interesting but the end was disappointing. Boo.

A recluse scholar dies under obscure circumstances and a novice reporter pursues a story that began 900 years ago with the theft of alchemical instruments from the court geographer of Sicily. The story follows the trail of several artifacts taking you on a journey around the world throughout time. DaVinci Code-esq

Great read, found that I didn't want to put the book down. The names of some of the secondary charaters, the ones involved with the "items" in the library, where a bit confusing. I do have a bunch of unanswered questions. Some of those would probably be answered if I reread the book, but I have so little time and too many books!

I really liked this book and am surprised by some of the poor reviews it's had here on PBS.

At first, the story is slow-going and hard to follow because every other chapter jumps back in time to relay how an item from "the geographer's library" is acquired by the Russians/Soviets. Nevertheless, I found it interesting. By the time I was midway through the book, my reading pace had picked up significantly and I was racing to the end to find out how it all came together.

Excellent concept very unevenly executed. The "flashback" chapters that describe the objects in the title's library are creative and fascinating; the "modern day" chapters seemed flat, probably because it was hard for me to take any interest in the main character. I just couldn't relate to him and didn't much like him, even though I wanted to, and the other characters weren't interesting enough to me to make up for him. Didn't finish this book, unfortunately. I had real high hopes for it.

This book barely kept my interest. It jumps back and forth between a rather lugburious young man in his post-college years to various characters over the centuries who possess strange objects that help them prolong their lives, but they don't seem as cute as Bilbo and Frodo. It's rather predictable.