The Plato Papers

by Peter Ackroyd | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: 0099289954 Global Overview for this book
Registered by Molyneux of Oxford, Oxfordshire United Kingdom on 1/19/2006
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5 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by Molyneux from Oxford, Oxfordshire United Kingdom on Thursday, January 19, 2006
Amazon.co.uk Review
London, 3700 AD. London's greatest orator, Plato, regularly delivers bravura public lectures on the long and tumultuous history of what is now a peaceful, tranquil city, secure in the certainty of its own relationship to the past. Plato's lectures are particularly fascinated with the dark and confused epoch known as The Age of Mouldwarp, stretching from 1500 to 2300AD. Plato lectures the citizens on what is still known about the extraordinary figures and customs of the period from what evidence remains. These include orations on the clown Sigmund Freud and his comic masterpiece Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious; the African singer George Eliot, apparently author of the poem The Waste Land; and Charles Dickens' greatest novel, The Origin of Species. Plato elaborates on the strange rites and rituals of the Age of Mouldwarp, including the cult of webs and nets that covered and enslaved the population. But Plato also begins to dialogue with his soul in the midst of these brilliant, precise public performances. Doubt begins to creep in to Plato's thinking. Is the past really past? And are the rituals of the present so superior to those of the past. These doubts lead Plato on a fateful journey.

Peter Ackroyd's Plato's Papers is an extraordinary novel that, as with the best of Ackroyd's fiction, treads a thin line between fantasy and biography, the genre so elegantly mastered by Ackroyd in his now classic studies of Dickens, T S Eliot and, most recently, The Life of Thomas More. The Plato Papers is a wonderfully observed satire on the ways in which historians and biographers can comically but also dangerously misrepresent the past and the arrogance that comes with philosophical certainty.

Journal Entry 2 by wingCoffee-1-OBCZwing from Cardiff, Wales United Kingdom on Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Donated by Molyneux for Bookcrossing in Cardiff.

Journal Entry 3 by wingCoffee-1-OBCZwing from Cardiff, Wales United Kingdom on Thursday, June 21, 2007
In the post today to rahar109 as a trade for Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt. Thank you for trading.

Journal Entry 4 by wingrahar109wing from Ash Vale, Surrey United Kingdom on Monday, June 25, 2007
Arrived safely in the post.
Thank you.

Journal Entry 5 by wingrahar109wing from Ash Vale, Surrey United Kingdom on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
A short quick read. Amusing to see the way the characters misinterpret the pitifully few artefacts remaining from our time.

Journal Entry 6 by wingrahar109wing at Camel & Artichoke in Waterloo, Greater London United Kingdom on Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Released 15 yrs ago (6/10/2008 UTC) at Camel & Artichoke in Waterloo, Greater London United Kingdom

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Being taken to the meet-up tonight.

Journal Entry 7 by WistfulDragon from Streatham, Greater London United Kingdom on Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Caught at the Camel and Artichoke at the Tuesday meetup - sorry for the delay in journalling, real life intervened!

Journal Entry 8 by WistfulDragon from Streatham, Greater London United Kingdom on Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Fascinating book. Not a great deal of plot, and you are left guessing about the characters quite a bit, but it certainly gets you thinking! Quick read too, so an all-round winner.

Released 15 yrs ago (7/8/2008 UTC) at Camel & Artichoke in Waterloo, Greater London United Kingdom

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

Dear Finder of this book,

I'm so glad it has found a home with you. I hope you enjoy reading it and that you might take a few moments to jot down here what you thought about the book, or about finding it, or about bookcrossing.

You don't have to join or sign up to bookcrossing to leave a comment here but if you do join, you will receive emails to alert you when others make a journal entry for this book and track its travels across the world. If you decide to join bookcrossing, now that you have discovered the site, I'd be delighted if you would mention me - WistfulDragon - as the person who introduced you to the site.

Happy reading

WistfulDragon

Journal Entry 10 by UrbanSpaceman from Strasbourg, Alsace France on Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Caught at the London meetup. Onto the TBR shelf...

Journal Entry 11 by UrbanSpaceman at Strasbourg, Alsace France on Saturday, April 22, 2023
Another BC tome that I have had for a decade and a half and which has recently re-emerged. I think this falls into the 'literature-that-could-equally-be-considered-science-fiction'. As an avid SF reader, I've read very many post-collapse novels where the protagonists attempt to interpret the past based on incomplete evidence. As a result, the book didn't seem particularly original in conception. although the specific London focus was interesting and Akroyd is always very, well... 'Akroyd' :) Will release in the wild later today.

Released 11 mos ago (4/22/2023 UTC) at Boîte à livres - Place du Vieux Marché aux Vins in Strasbourg, Alsace France

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Hope an English language book may be of interest. The last book I released here has gone, though not been registered on BC.

Released 11 mos ago (4/22/2023 UTC) at Boîte à livres - Place du Vieux Marché aux Vins in Strasbourg, Alsace France

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Hope an English language book may be of interest. The last book I released here has gone, though not been registered on BC.

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