I finally got around to ordering some new books. First up isThe Friar and the Cipher : Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World I am loving this book so far. Both the cipher and the unusual manuscript in the title reference The Voynich Manuscript, an encrypted tome discovered in 1912 by the English book dealer Wilfrid Michael Voynich. I am 80 pages in, and so far the book has concentrated on how knowledge was passed down from Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle through the Muslim world and back to Medieval Europe. It is truly fascinating, if I could retain half of the facts and bits of trivia that this book is throwing at me I would have material to bore and annoy my friends with for the rest of the year.
If you liked Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, you will love this book. The subject is similar, the pacing is better, and you don’t have to worry about which characters are fictional! Even better if you haven’t read the Baroque cycle, but plan to this book is the perfect primer to understand the environment of the characters in that trilogy.
March 25th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Comparing a book to Stepenson’s 2 books is a serious downer.