My book report

I read a lot of books these days. That means by definition, I read a lot of horrible books. Maybe someday I'll make a little blog post about the awful books I've read, but not today.

Instead, I'm 'blogging' to say that I just finished one of the best books I've ever read: "An Instance of the Fingerpost" by Iain Pears.

I won't describe it much, except to say that it's similar to "Name of the Rose", but much more readable and more interesting. Check it out on amazon.com or whatever if you want. Although I'll say that the amazon.com reviewers seem mostly to have missed what makes this book so special.

Reviews here if you're bored.

But I want to say that I think that books and stories are, or should aspire to be, five things:

1) fairy tales
2) mysteries
3) love stories
4) grand epics
5) the pilgrim's progress

I don't mean that some books should be one and some the other. That's true, alas, but sucks and is terribly myopic, and is partially responsible for my having read a ton of bad books.

What I mean that every story should be all of those five things. That goes for D&D campaigns too, even DiD.

I don't care much for plot and characters, as they're all sort of the same, averaged over stories. I'm more interested in structural elements and the way in which those five qualities above relate to each other. "Instance of the Fingerpost" is masterfully crafted, and basically perfect in each of those five ways. One of those rare books that was a joy to read and appreciate.

Basically, it's four different versions of the same story, a murder mystery set in 17th century Oxford, told in first person, although the main character is neither of those four characters. Sounds like a yawn, although it's a fucking great read as it is.

But I don't care about 'murder mysteries'. It's just a device. It's the structure, which, my god, is genius. The evolution of the main character throughout the novel occurs not chronologically, but in the repeated telling of the story. Brilliantly, the title makes sense only 90% of the way through the book, is the solution to the murder, and is itself a double entendre, who's second meaning I think is what the book is truly about. Although the solution to the crime then leaves about 50 pages of text, two other puzzles are satisfactorily answered- the final one, in the last three pages, gaining significance only in terms of the very first sentence of the novel (which, at first read, is completely innocuous- more or less "Hi, this is me, I'm going to tell you a story.").

...

Not bad for a guy whose other claim to fame is writing a series of books unfortunately named 'Art History Mysteries'. Although I might actually read those dimestore-lookin' books given that Instance of the Fingerpost is essentially literary perfection, on the order of Foucault's Pendulum and Pale Fire. In a way, it's sort of a cross between Eco and Nabokov, which is exactly what I read tons of awful books trying to find.