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People of the Book

Geraldine Brooks

Start date: January 1, 2020

Finish date: January 30, 2020

Discussion: Country and Territories

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People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

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People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

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Country and Territories

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What Members Thought

Jan 14, 2012 Richard Derus rated it liked it

Rating: 3* of five

This is the very first book about books I've ever read that left me hating people more than when I started it.

Hanna, what a terrible waste of a person. Sarah, her mother, my GOD what a cold, stoney bas-relief of a human being she was. Orzen, Werner, yechptui on all of 'em and the parts set in the past...! The Nazis, well, it's shootin' tuna in a 55-gallon oil drum (aka the Gulf of Mexico) to hate THEM, but the collaborators! On and on, back through the Western World's horrible, ...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Meg - A Bookish Affair rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction

Full disclosure: I listened to this book. I think this definitely colored some of my review.

People of the Book tells the story of the various people who have all had some part in the life of one particular Jewish religious text called the Haggadah. The Haggadah tells about the order of the Passover Seder. The story opens on the particular Haggadah in question as Hanna, an Australian book restorer, comes to look at and repair the book in Sarajevo during the mid-1990s. The story stretches from the Full disclosure: I listened to this book. I think this definitely colored some of my review.

People of the Book tells the story of the various people who have all had some part in the life of one particular Jewish religious text called the Haggadah. The Haggadah tells about the order of the Passover Seder. The story opens on the particular Haggadah in question as Hanna, an Australian book restorer, comes to look at and repair the book in Sarajevo during the mid-1990s. The story stretches from the Spanish Inquisition to the early 2000s. It is truly fascinating historical fiction, especially for those like me that love old books and the history of the various stories that we tell ourselves and each other as humans.

I think this is a great book that shows how important books have been to we humans for many, many years. They tell our history. They tell our future generations how we lived and who we were. They hold clues to what things were really like for us when we were living. The fascinating thing about book restoring that we see in the book is that it allows future book restorers to understand the methods used in order to date when various restorations were completed.

This book also has a pretty good mystery that doesn't come out until later in the book. I almost wish that it had come sooner because I spent a lot of time wondering why all of these different characters were being introduced. It was hard to see the connections until the very end.

This part did not affect my review of the book. Okay, I'm new to listening to audiobooks. This marks the second audiobook that I've listened to all the way through. I had a couple criticisms. First, it was very hard at first to understand the reader's accent. She has a fairly strong Aussie accent and does a lot of accents for some of the other characters. Additionally she uses the same voice for two characters in the book, the main character and another very important character, which made it really difficult to not get confused about who was speaking. I did finally hit a stride with the narrator and it wasn't bad.

Another downfall of the audiobook version of this book is that there were so many characters and so many different time periods. I definitely had to keep looking at the titles of the various chapters to make sure I knew exactly who was supposed to be speaking and when they were from (the chapter titles included the name of the characters and also their time period). It wasn't a killer but it definitely was difficult to keep in my mind who all the major players were.

Bottom line: this is an enjoyable book but may be better read than listened to. ...more

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Mar 10, 2017 Wendy rated it liked it

Shelves: wom-2017, 4000-books, mar-17

This is my 3rd book by Geraldine Brooks and my least favourite.

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Mar 10, 2009 Janice rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Does anyone write historical fiction better than Geraldine Brooks? If so, I'd like to read that author too. I love the way she finds a small bit of history and concentrates and fleshes it out with great plots and characters. I had read a wonderful book called 'Ornament of the World' about the 400 year control of Andalusia by the Muslim empire and the remarkable advances made then in literature and knowledge. People of the Book expounded on this for me. Definitely worth reading. 4+ stars. ...more

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Oct 10, 2008 Angela rated it it was amazing

This book flows rather well for having to go back in time and "current". Not many books which try this have a smooth flow. I highly enjoyed reading it and learning in the process (for parts of it I looked up the history of what was being said). ...more

1 like · Like · see review