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Reader Reviews | |
Review by John Finch (300411) Rating (8/10) Review
by John Finch
My interest was mainly in the book as a biography, and as I reached
the end of it I felt that I had an understanding not only of what
Ashmole did and where he spent his life - the sort of information
provided by other shorter missives - but because the author attempts
to draw sensible conclusions about Ashmole's reasoning as he deals
with the various challenges in his life, I also obtained a feeling
for his personality. This is not easy to do and the author is
to be congratulated on this achievement.
If I'm really critical, one aspect that was not so good and that
I found annoyed me as I read, was the use of too many metaphors,
some of them excruciating - "While Ashmole's wisdom was well
rooted and watered in the past, he delighted in the flora of futurity".
Or possibly worse, when the author describes something that "...provided
the golden thread in the velvet of his life". There are more,
but I can't bring myself to repeat them. In my paperback edition,
some of the illustrations were too dark, particularly of houses,
churches, view across fields and the like - making it difficult
to make out any significant detail in them to the extent that
the point of including them was lost. However, this is minor detail
and probably only annoying to me because excessive metaphor usage
is a pet hate of mine! |
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