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210th out of 675 books
—
2,008 voters
The Book of Air and Shadows
"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...more
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...more
Hardcover, 466 pages
Published
March 27th 2007
by William Morrow
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Shakespeare, Russian gangsters, cyphers, antique books, sex and the English Civil War - what's not to like?
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 bored by the book, it just sat on my bedside table for two months, half finished and ignored in favor of other books. I always intended to finish it. I was never so disgusted that I put it down with the intention of n...more
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 bored by the book, it just sat on my bedside table for two months, half finished and ignored in favor of other books. I always intended to finish it. I was never so disgusted that I put it down with the intention of n...more
This book seemingly has it all- Russian/Jewish mobsters, Shakespeare scholars, lying women, Jesuit priest/thug, intelligent and sassy middle aged women (wait, can anyone over the age of 25 be considered sassy?), ciphers, several conspiracty theories some twists and turns and a big finish. What it doesn't have is that undefinable quality that distinguishes it from all the other dime a dozen conspiracy books. The writing is adequate though not compelling which is why I can't rank it more than two...more
I usually try to give each book the first one hundred pages before deciding to quit. If it hasn't hooked me by then, it's doubtful it'll hook me any time soon. I gave this book the first forty pages and gave up. It's almost mind-numbingly boring. Written in first-person, so we know the narrator makes it through whatever it is that's coming up, there is no hook early on to make me want to keep reading. The narrator rambles on about things not connected to the main lost-manuscript-of-Shakespeare p...more
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Just dragged myself through the first chapter and i'm already questioning whether i should continue reading. Its just not fascinating me. In addition i hate the writing style. For someone like me who loves proper punctuating, this guy uses a million commas, in all the right places, but still its driving me nuts.
OK! and thats the end of that. I just finished the third chapter and almost cried at the idea of venturing on to the fourth. The main narrator just rambles on page after page, comma after...more
OK! and thats the end of that. I just finished the third chapter and almost cried at the idea of venturing on to the fourth. The main narrator just rambles on page after page, comma after...more
I really wanted to give this one a chance, but it was so bogged down in meaningless details that very little happened within the first 100 pages. The style of writing is very meandering, so much that it detracts from the plot. Which is a shame, because the premise of the book sounded very interesting, but in the end it was just too dull for me to be able to get through. For me, it spent way too much time dwelling on the family of the characters rather than establishing a plot.
Picked up this book because it was a fictional mystery surrounding one of my all-time favorite writers, 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 this one is just...poorly written. The characters are nothing great, most are not even believable and have a very base personality, the setting is rather dull and stupid, and overall the story is rather predictable...more
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 this one is just...poorly written. The characters are nothing great, most are not even believable and have a very base personality, the setting is rather dull and stupid, and overall the story is rather predictable...more
a very enjoyable, but deeply flawed book...
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...
enjoyable, because the erudition and imagination that went into its creation are absolutely superlative...
the literary treasure hunt of the main characters and the prize itself are both filled with intellectual verisimilitud...more
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...
enjoyable, because the erudition and imagination that went into its creation are absolutely superlative...
the literary treasure hunt of the main characters and the prize itself are both filled with intellectual verisimilitud...more
A rather thrilling story about the discovery of a letter that proves not only Shakespeare's existence but also the existence of another, previously unknown, play. The best part of the book is how the author told the story from alternating viewpoints - one as events are happening and one from the first-person perspective of one of the characters. There is ALOT of back story about who these two main characters are as a way to explain why they do what they do, although I don't know that it is so co...more
My biggest problem with this book is the narrator's voice. Maybe I should say voices, because there are two. The first is in first person and as he tells his story he becomes more and more irritating due to his almost complete self-absorption, and I feel that the focus on his incessant and often pointless yammering detracts from the story itself. The second is a third person narrator. Having a first person narrator and a third person narrator in the same story irritates the crap out of me. Pick...more
Were it not for a couple of flaws, I might have given this book 5 stars. I liked the premise and the way the plot was developed; there were a couple of surprises along the way, which is always nice. One enjoyable aspect of the book was the occasional acute observation on the part of the author. These were usually apropos of nothing; just an unexpected bonus that I found striking and something that makes the book more than a standard thriller. My principal complaints have to do with the climax of...more
What a fascinating story Gruber has constructed. There is a manuscript from the 1600's used as padding in the covers of an old map portfolio found by the geeky book shop young man; the story of the bookshop man; the story of a lawyer who received the manuscript from a client and the client then was murdered for it; and multiple other storylines. The gist is there might be an unpublished Shakespeare play buried in England, written in his own hand. Since none of Shakespeare’s plays were even signe...more
This COULD have been an amazing book. If only the author had just stuck to his very interesting plot, instead of continually sharing pointless details and side stories about the characters. The main story was fascinating: Letters leading to a secret cipher that when cracked would lead to a hidden, and previously unread Shakespeare play. But for some reason the author could not seem to stay with this story. He seemed more interested in telling the story of the sexual pursuits of his various unlik...more
Apr 20, 2013
Yvonne
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
lovers of literary fiction
Recommended to Yvonne by:
Lisaana Otter 3/19/2013
I loved this book! What an amazing feat Michael Gruber has pulled off to write three stories and interweave them into this thrilling literary detective mystery. The closer to the close of the book I got, the more I wanted to flip to the end to find out what happened, is this going to be the best forgery of all time? is the guy going to get the girl? is the girl true-blue or a gangster sorceress duping the naive nerd into playing his part in the sting? Oh, my! I was overwrought, trying to read as...more
Take DaVinci Code, swap Catholicism for Shakespeare, improve the prose by a degree (but *only* a degree) and voila! The Book of Air and Shadows. Man, what a terrible title- hints at something much more grand and mysterious than what's offered here. There's nothing more sinister here than Russian gangsters.
As it went on, I couldn't be bothered with the old letters, impressive as they might be. A.S. Byatt did this sort of thing in Possession and while it was much more vital there, it's just too mu...more
As it went on, I couldn't be bothered with the old letters, impressive as they might be. A.S. Byatt did this sort of thing in Possession and while it was much more vital there, it's just too mu...more
Interesting concept for a book, but not the storyline was not interesting enough to keep me glued to it. I think I would have lost interest and the will to finish it, if it weren't our book club selection for the month of April...and I didn't have 8 hours of travel via plane to kill. The letters that are interspersed throughout the book were difficult to read, and so I started by-passing those completely very early on. It did not seem to impact my understanding of what was taking place. I did th...more
I loved this book because it's written in several different voices; in fact I almost quit reading it because the first narrator's voice was super casual and seemed like a mindless pop fiction. but don't let it fool you. The style picked up and entertained me as soon as the other narrator emerged. It contains movie references -- which was fun for cultural references, and I loved deciperhing the allulsions. The book has been compared to DaVinci Code, but only because it's a suspense thriller, cros...more
I love a good thriller. And while this novel contained the requisite shady characters following their multiple subplots with ciphers thrown in for good measure, it lacked *something.*
Some of the character motivations and plot points didn't really make sense. And the main character, Jake Mishkin, is not very sympathetic. In fact, by the end of the story, I didn't particularly care what happened to him next.
That said, I liked the way Gruber supplemented the story with knowledge. I learned a lot...more
Some of the character motivations and plot points didn't really make sense. And the main character, Jake Mishkin, is not very sympathetic. In fact, by the end of the story, I didn't particularly care what happened to him next.
That said, I liked the way Gruber supplemented the story with knowledge. I learned a lot...more
'The Book of Air and Shadows' is not really a literary mystery. It's a regular mystery whose plot features a literary icon. I'm enjoying the mystery aspect, but I must admit that when the story centers on a potentially undiscovered Shakespeare autograph manuscript, I would like the meat of the story to be a little more worthy of the idea it's trying to sell. In this vein, I prefered 'Codex' by Lev Grossman and 'The Rule of Four' by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason.
Part Possession part The Last Templar part Dan Brown and part lame. The language in this books shows such promise at first but deteriorates into an over ambitious confusing story. The parts where Gruber writes about cinema, life and art are breathtakingly brilliant. The parts where he dissolves the fourth wall are cringingly bad.[return][return]I thought the old English in the alternating chapters would give me a headache at first but the story was so captivating and humorous it pulled me throug...more
Wow...the Goodreads community is really hatin' on this one. I don't think it deserves quite such harsh treatment. However, I often have a fairly high tolerance for overly wordy writers. And I can stomach an unpleasant narrator from time to time. Any reader whose preference is an admirable story teller would get a belly full of Jake quick enough...he is a pig.
In my estimation, although slow going at times, the book merits 3 stars. The plot is convoluted in that the action covers several historic...more
In my estimation, although slow going at times, the book merits 3 stars. The plot is convoluted in that the action covers several historic...more
The Book of Air and Shadows falls into that curious genre known as the "literary thriller" - curious because most thrillers mostly contain poor to middling writing (read: Dan Brown) and focus almost solely on plot, and much less on character development or other things that you find in books that carry the "literature" label.
Since I am a fan of more literary works (yes, I am pretentious that way) but still enjoy a good plot every now and then, books like this one appeal to me a lot and I thoroug...more
Since I am a fan of more literary works (yes, I am pretentious that way) but still enjoy a good plot every now and then, books like this one appeal to me a lot and I thoroug...more
Having read the Jimmy Paz trilogy by Gruber, I had to try more of Gruber's books. By the way, I highly recommend this trilogy. I think it starts with Tropic of Night. It's much more fast-paced than this (for all of you who thought this was too slow). The suspense and supernatural factors are fantastic.
I was amazed at the complexity of the Shakespearean plot in The Book of Air and Shadows. It was intricate and satisfying. The plot unified the stories of several different players, Crosetti and Mis...more
I was amazed at the complexity of the Shakespearean plot in The Book of Air and Shadows. It was intricate and satisfying. The plot unified the stories of several different players, Crosetti and Mis...more
This book is interesting on so many levels. It is a "thriller" involving cryptography, the possible location of a Shakespeare script never even heard of before, the Russian mob, an intellectual property lawyer, a budding script writer, a young woman who is a book binder by trade, a Catholic priest, and two Shakespeare scholars, to name a few. The main narrator of the story is the intellectual property lawyer, Jake, who is writing the story of the search for the script as he hides out from the mo...more
Fun mystery interwoven with Shakespeare lore. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I liked cryptograms and was more interested in Shakespeare's life and times. I did find the sections about Shakespeare's life and times interesting, and readable, despite the "Old English" text.
However, every time the characters started talking about cryptograms and ciphers I was completely lost. I know that the author obviously knows a lot about this, but he didn't do a great job of making it accessible to hi...more
However, every time the characters started talking about cryptograms and ciphers I was completely lost. I know that the author obviously knows a lot about this, but he didn't do a great job of making it accessible to hi...more
The Book of Air and Shadows is definitely not what I expected. Like other reviewers, I found myself struggling to get past the first 50 or so pages but I forced myself to because I was hoping for some redeeming qualities. There were none, save for the decoded Bracegirdle manuscript pages which I found more interesting than the actual storyline revolving around them (and hence a 1-star rating rather than zero). The main character, Jake Mishkin, is so unlikeable, and the author goes through such g...more
Scaling this book is akin to reading three different fictions at once. Lawyer Jake Mishkin narrates his own current-day personal, professional, and purloining exploits. We are apprised of the dealing and dodging of bookstore clerk Albert Cosetti. Interspersed within the two tales are the letters of Richard Bracegirdle, a 17th Century ironsmith turned accountant, turned spy on William Shakespeare.
Each element sets a pace toward a collision. Mishkin, a New York intellectual property attorney, beco...more
Each element sets a pace toward a collision. Mishkin, a New York intellectual property attorney, beco...more
I wanted to like this more than I did. The plot is potentially kind of cool -- two young people (Carolyn and Crosetti) who work at a bookstore that specializes in rare books find clues to a possible unknown Shakespeare play. The story is a mystery on two levels: present day New York and 17th C England. Both of these stories were a bit annoying though. The story in England is written in a set of letters about a person who is spying on Shakespeare. The letters are fairly interesting, and that stor...more
To sum up my impressions of this book into one word: tedious. I wanted to abandon it by page 50; had to repeatedly push myself to pick it up again and continue reading. I expect a best-seller to fascinate, compel and to alter my perspective, but this did not. There are plenty of English historical references, details of book-binder's craft and challenges of authenticating a manuscript, also political intrigues, historical as well as within academia and the world of gangsters.
The book follows 3 p...more
The book follows 3 p...more
This book is based upon a fictional account of discovering one of Shakespeare’s lost plays about the Queen of Scots.
It thrusts its’ main characters into a world of literary intrigue and adventure, complete with your typical Russian gangsters, ciphers in ancient cryptology, and double-crossing spies!
The main characters are an IP lawyer, Jake Mishkin, and a film school wannabe, Albert Crosetti. Although Gruber does a good job at propelling seemingly ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances...more
It thrusts its’ main characters into a world of literary intrigue and adventure, complete with your typical Russian gangsters, ciphers in ancient cryptology, and double-crossing spies!
The main characters are an IP lawyer, Jake Mishkin, and a film school wannabe, Albert Crosetti. Although Gruber does a good job at propelling seemingly ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances...more
I wanted to like this book, I really did. On paper it had all the elements of a great mystery. Similar in historical scope to the DiVinci Code, but set in the literary world so not as much of an obvious knockoff.
But reading the manuscript parts proved exhausting. What could have been, should have been the most intriging part of the story took sooo long to develop that every time I encountered a new section I got that oh no not again feeling. I have to confess I ended up skipping them after a whi...more
But reading the manuscript parts proved exhausting. What could have been, should have been the most intriging part of the story took sooo long to develop that every time I encountered a new section I got that oh no not again feeling. I have to confess I ended up skipping them after a whi...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Literary thriller | 2 | 47 | Jul 07, 2008 10:00am |
Michael Gruber is an author living in Seattle, Washington. He attended Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami. He worked as a cook, a marine biologist, a speech writer, a policy advisor for the Jimmy Carter White House, and a bureaucrat for the EPA before becoming a novelist.
He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tane...more
More about Michael Gruber...
He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tane...more
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