Baudolino Group Read -- Chapters 25 - 31

Here we are, well over halfway along Baudolino's fantastic adventure story. I'll admit that I thought this book would be a lot more difficult to read than it has turned out to be.

Just starting part 4 - I agree, it is fairly romping along!

I'm taking a holiday break since we flew to see family and I didn't want to carry the nice hardback copy of Baudolino on the plane. I'm missing it though and was just about to start this section.

I suppose you should be careful what you imagine, Baudolino and his band of men come across some of the animals / people they described in the letter. This section is enjoyable, a tale of yore, with strange creatures and people, of distant land and peoples with strange customs.

As they near the promised land, it isn't what they expected it to be, is that because they have searched for so long? So long, that nothing could live up to the expectations they have?

japaul, I have also been impressed with the quality of the hard cover version of the book. Is there a name for that style of page edges?

Does it have a deckle edge -- where it looks like it was torn?

Yeah, in the past few years I've come to dislike mass market paperbacks. In the case of my copy of Baudolino, I ordered it sight unseen. The quality of the book does enhance or detract from the reading experience.

That's it! Now if I could remember that term in the times between holding books with a deckle edge. Thanks!

I finished Baudolino this morning. What a ride!

I've just begun this segment. I blame a houseguest and having Thanksgiving at my house this year. Would you like to open the last thread, mamzel?

You learn something new every day! I had never heard of a deckle edge before, but I've appreciated them in the past. The copy I have is a hard cover edition published by Harcourt. It's very nicely done.

I'm back from our holiday travels which means I'm also back to Baudolino's adventures and just starting this section.

Thanks, Alison, I will.

Here is the link to the last thread.

So, I was reading along, thinking I was reading a clever book putting the reader into the Medieval mind, in which an argument against a spherical earth could be convincing and where the possibility of fantastical creatures excited the imagination.

And then they cross the river of rock and enter into a land where all those bizarre things exist. So is Baudolino just spinning a wild tale, or does this book exist in the Medieval world as its contemporaries saw it? Some of the creatures are drawn from fiction written well after the medieval period -- the houyhnhnms are straight out of Gulliver's Travels, for example.

So now I'm reading a different book than the one I had thought I was reading.

I agree, it threw me for a loop. I'm on to the next section, so this could be slightly later, but at a certain point he describes creatures of the West (our land) from the point of view of the members of this new land. It sounds just as fantastic. I think part of the point is that words can be deceiving. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it though. All of the previous action, I felt that Baudolino was exaggerating his role and importance but that the basic facts were true. This section does not inspire that same confidence!