Re: Do we have any travel agents here? - OT

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...

>All this down time lately has allowed me to actually read a book! I am SO
>sorry that I'm finished with it, as it was an amazing read: The Da Vinci
>Code. Oh, and I read a biography about Robert Mapplethorpe. Now I am out of
>fresh books once again. Poop.

Let me recommend one I just finished, then: "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kin 
Stanley Robinson. This is sort of an alternate-history book, but a very 
ambitious one. The beginning premise is that instead of killing 30% of the 
European population as happened in our universe, the Black Death epidemic took 
out something over 90% of Europe. This completely removes Christianity from the 
board as a major player; China and the Islamic empire step in to fill the gap 
early on, and later India and the New World native peoples are also 
influential. The whole thing is framed in a concept from Buddhist philosophy: 
that groups of souls (called jatis) journey thru their repeated lives together, 
finding each other and striving for enlightenment. The author makes it easy to 
figure out who's who -- characters who are the same soul all have names 
starting with the same letter, which would of course not necessarily be the 
case in real life. <g> The book as a whole covers about 500 years. 

The first part of the book is rather a slow read, but after about the halfway 
point the pace picks up. Having read it, I now completely understand why it was 
nominated for a Hugo this year. (It didn't win, though.) I also learned quite a 
bit about various Eastern philosophies, which was interesting. 

Celine

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