So many books, so little time

Lately I've been reading far faster than I can bring myself to blog. It's not really that I'm reading more books; I just can't always think of something constructive to say about them. For instance, last week I finished An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. It's amazingly good and an international bestseller and I liked it heaps more than I liked his more recent Dream of Scipio. But I can't think of much to add to the dozens of reviews already out there. Read it if you want an exciting historical murder mystery that keeps you turning pages to the very end.

Sigh, Of course I can't stop there though. The books is about a death in Oxford in 1663. There are four separate accounts from four people with very different philosophies and motives: an Italian doctor attempting to use the scientific method, a deeply superstitious young nobleman, a cryptographer and an historian. Each of these is completely convincing at the time but each separate account highlights contradictions in earlier ones. Pears has just put so much knowledge in there from such a wide range of fields, from architecture, religion, philosophy and political history, that I'm in awe that someone's head can hold that much stuff and he can still write a good book. I'm looking at you, Neal Stephenson with your overblown Baroque trilogy. Grr.

I'd even go as far as to say that this is the best book I've read so far this year.