(Debby)
I read some Julian Barnes before I got sick and then while I was sick, and then I wrote this while I was recovering

Arthur & George – This is a good book. If I was going to read a historical fiction novel, this is the book I would read. But, that said, I am not going to read historical fiction, so I just skimmed this one and sort of skipped the middle chunk.

Those poor characters trapped in the Historical Novel. They are doomed to a certain fate, forced to make decisions not just by the authors’ pen but by the confines of the Understood and Accepted narrow path of History. They and their entire backdrop are doomed to travel a known path and eventually arrive, grudgingly, at the Present, where we stand, smug and bemused, waiting for their inevitable arrival.

This is probably part of why I am so enamored of books by Dorothy L Sayers and Wilkie Collins and Dashiell Hammett – mystery authors who set their stories in the present tense, and were the more honest for it. They and their characters face an Unknown Future, rather than the Certain Fate of their Historical Novel counterparts. They stand, with us, at a series of unending crossroads, and sometimes they can have some control over which way history will go, but often they can only look on as a spectator, speculate which way the engine will go, and hope for the best.

A Short History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters – Now THIS is a book that I actually like. A lot. 10 ½ wide ranging and ridiculously fun chapters. Highly recommended.