Hey Amanda,nothing is more pleasing to me than reading,I love to read anything on history,and have hundreds of books.great idea.I will have to have a look at some of your favorites. ta the Don.

Having never previously read anything by Julian Barnes I was not sure what to expect, the idea that someone could sum up the history of the world in 10 ½ chapters seemed like an impossibility and certainly if you were convinced that this 300 page book would tell you all there was to know about the world’s past then you would be sadly let down… In fact one could even say you have missed the boat …
However if you wanted to take a tour through the ages from a different perspective than a regular tome then this book is for you. It is well crafted and cunningly weaved together despite the seeming lack of a common thread, the chapters are actually individual stories told in a variety of manners, some via Letters to a loved one, some in the first person and others from a third person perspective. The common thread is that the stories all relate to story of Noah’s Ark and finding the link in some of the stories is actually the most fun I had with the book…
For example buried in the Visitors story, there is a single line reference to separating the clean from the unclean … in reference to the animals that were chosen to be consumed on the Ark’s ships. The more obvious connections like the boarding passengers being compared to “animals arriving two by two” are in my opinion a bit too blunt an instrument but they serve a purpose… From old ladies climbing hills to modern day actors recreating Jesuit’s paths down a mosquito ridden river the characters are all linked together