<![CDATA[The Book of Air and Shadows: A Novel]]>

false <![CDATA[The Book of Air and Shadows: A Novel]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255952124m/1175978.jpg 609801 17 A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death . . . A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries . . . An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth . . . The Washington Post called Michael Gruber's previous work "a miracle of intelligent fiction and among the essential novels of recent years." Now comes his most intellectually provocative and compulsively readable novel yet. Tap-tapping the keys and out come the words on this little screen, and who will read them I hardly know. I could be dead by the time anyone actually gets to read them, as dead as, say, Tolstoy. Or Shakespeare. Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives? These are the words of Jake Mishkin, whose seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer—or killers—unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for four hundred years. In a frantic race from New York to England and Switzerland, Jake finds himself matching wits with a shadowy figure who seems to anticipate his every move. What at first seems like a thrilling puzzle waiting to be deciphered soon turns into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where no one—not family, not friends, not lovers—is to be trusted. Moving between twenty-first-century America and seventeenth-century England, The Book of Air and Shadows is a modern thriller that brilliantly re-creates William Shakespeare's life at the turn of the seventeenth century and combines an ingenious and intricately layered plot with a devastating portrait of a contemporary man on the brink of self-discovery . . . or self-destruction. 596283 15 3 2007 The Book of Air and Shadows total:1388|5:119|4:426|3:479|2:258|1:106| 1388 4358 2388 459 1 4 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 06 09:42:05 -0800 2007 Sun Jul 06 20:38:03 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 5 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 12 20:55:47 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 12 21:02:02 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 2 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Thu May 31 14:41:15 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 14 11:57:02 -0700 2007 William Shakespeare.

Got halfway through this book. I ended up so bored with it that I just decided to not finish, which isn't something I do easily. I hate not finishing a book, but ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Aug 09 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 30 18:10:58 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 16 08:55:10 -0700 2008
flawed, because the gratuitous and largely pointless sexual content of this book almost causes it to founder...as a matter of fact, if you look at the majority of the reviews here and on amazon, many a reader could not get past it...
enjoya...more...]]> 2 1 false false Thu Jun 19 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 14 12:23:41 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 09 13:53:42 -0700 2008
Well, nothing really. Of course there wasn't much that I found that I actually liked either. Actually that's a bit unfair to The Book of Air and Shadows. It's not as if I was bo...more...]]> 1 2 false false Fri Jul 04 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Feb 28 10:29:19 -0800 2008 Sat Jul 05 19:54:51 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 26 10:29:24 -0800 2007 Fri Jan 04 05:39:07 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Sep 18 20:00:44 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 18 20:02:03 -0700 2007

All thrillers should be as smart, filled with compellingly flawed characters and as much fun as Mr. Gruber’s latest.

You can imagine the excitement of Albert Crosetti, an employee in a musty New York antiquarian bookstore, when he finds 17th century letters hinti...more...]]> 3 2 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Oct 19 19:25:28 -0700 2008 Thu Nov 06 13:12:01 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Apr 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 21 16:08:39 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 21 16:12:41 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Jul 22 16:22:05 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 06 07:43:43 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 22 16:22:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 2 false false Tue Apr 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 13 16:32:59 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 15 17:01:53 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 15 05:33:29 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 15 08:36:46 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 2 false false Wed Apr 02 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Feb 16 00:07:18 -0800 2008 Fri Apr 04 22:43:05 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Apr 09 13:30:11 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 09 13:39:03 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sun Apr 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 21 06:59:43 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 21 07:08:55 -0700 2008
Some of the character motivations and plot points didn't really make sense. And the main character, Jake...more...]]> 3 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 09 10:51:17 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 16 17:07:55 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 22 16:14:18 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 16:30:10 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Feb 14 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 23:59:25 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 00:16:21 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Aug 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 20:01:21 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 20:09:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1175978