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The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova


Kell

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So, the May Reading Circle book has been decided - The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I'll hopefuly be picking up a copy this weekend then & getting onto it as soon as I'm finished with my current reading trilogy. I'll look forward to chatting with you all about it!

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I've read about 12 chapters so far, and I am intrigued. It's written differently then some of the books I've been reading recently, and I've been reading it in tiny chunks. I think I need to 'get into it', if that makes any sense?!

 

Anyway.. Bram Stroker's 'Dracula' has been mentioned so many times, that I feel a need to read that too.. so I've just picked it up at the library!

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I'm up to Ch8 & so far I'm loving it. I did a paper on Dracula by Bram Stoker when I was in secondary school, so all the research I did on Vlad Tepes, as a side-line to that, is coming flooding back. I think I might rather enjoy this...

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I'm finding that the action moves very slowly, but that's possibly because of all the back & forth between different time lines as "father" relates his story. I've just finished part one & only realised at the end that only 6 days have passed in the father's story, even if it's taken onger to tell as it's been related over much longer to the daughter.

 

That said, i'm very much enjoying it so far.

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Well, I estimate I've got maybe a half-dozen chapters to read, which means I'll be done this weekend (possibly even tonight if i get a good run at it!). I'm looking forward to seeing how it all ends. How far as everyone else got with it? Anyone care to share their thoughts on it at all?

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I'm still not too far into this one as it is a bulky read and I have to read in large chunks to absorb everything.

 

I'm about 20 chapters in so far but I am really enjoying the story so far. The annoying thing is, she keeps ending her chapters on cliffhangers and so you have to read on to find out more!! So many times I've said "i'll finish reading this chapter and go do the housework", only to find myself still reading an twenty minutes later lol

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I know exactly what you mean, Kat - it was maddening having to put the book down after my coffee or lunch break & go back to work whilst torturing myself over what was going to happen next!

 

Michelle - you've got some great stuff coming up very, very soon!

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I just finished this one last night, it took two days of constant reading to get through it. The story was still brilliant though.

Sometimes it felt a bit too much 'text book-ish' but I would put it down and come back to it half an hour later ready to read it. The descriptive passages about different countries were great, they give you a real picture of what the character sees, although half the time they were placed after a real plot development and you didn't really care, you just wanted to know what was going on!!

The story itself was great, not knowing much about dracula I got into this one pretty fast and kept up with the plot really well (so previous knowledge not essential)

 

On the whole a great read. (just glad I can put it down and pick up something a little less bulky now :D )

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I agree about the text-bookishness, Kat - there were large passages where it almost seemed like a long history olesson - but an interesting one, at least. It brought back to me a lot of the research I did back in high school when I wrote a paper on Dracula, but I also learned a lot of new information regarding the circumstances of the time & region in reading The Historian.

 

Did anyone else find they sometimes lost track of who was telling the story at any given point? I sometimes found myself struggling to remember if it was the father relating the story of his mentor to his daughter & the moments when the daughter was reading the letters from her father which mentioned the letters from his professor (if that makes any sense at all!). If I was only getting a short run at it, I would forget & have to flick back a few pages for a clue, or carry on regardless till it became more obvious.

 

I think that if I'd read it all in longer stretches, this wouldn't have happened so much & the flow would have been smoother for me.

 

Also, not being funny, but does anyone remember the daughter's name ever being mentioned? I can't for the life of me recall having seen her name at all - LOL!

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In reply to Michelle:

 

Do you mean Rossi getting freaked out in the library when he's looking at the 3 maps & that man appears & takes it all away from him? I don't remember that being fully explained either. The man in question was obviously a vampire (or at least a semi-vampire) & gave him the willies, but I didn't quite get why it put him off the hunt for so long. Unless it's all part of the amnesia thing later on.

 

I can't rightly remember - I've read another 2 books in between then & now, so I'm already losing bits of the plot in my head - LOL!

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