An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Great Sea

The other problem with The Boundless Sea (see this blog 27 April 2021) is that it's not exactly boundless. The Mediterranean, I soon found (and yes, I should have checked earlier), is completely out of bounds – because it's covered in David Abulafia's companion book, The Great Sea.

The Great Sea sees the same hyperbolists from the cover of The Boundless Sea at it again: Dominic Sandbrook finds it "magnificently satisfying"; and Simon Sebag Montefiore says it's "gripping".

So far, I haven't found it either of these... but it does seem to have a livelier opening than that of The Boundless Sea. And it covers many of the places that I have a passion for, so I'm setting sail in the hope of discoveries that may justify those cover lines...

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Boundless Sea

After getting bogged down in Dante (see this blog 29 March 2021), I decided to take a break and head for the open sea with David Abulafia.

Should one judge a book by its cover? This one quotes Peter Frankopan in The Sunday Times as saying the contents are "breathtaking"; Dominic Sandbrook, also from The Sunday Times: "dazzling"; and Simon Sebag Montefiore in The Daily Telegraph: "intense and thrilling".

All of which leads me to wonder if any of them have read it from the beginning...

Admittedly, I'm only 200 pages in – and it may get a bit livelier in the next 700 pages – but to me it feels like sitting in a history lesson where so many facts are being fired off at you that you're torn between trying to catch every word... and nodding off.

It may be about the story of humans and their vast watery planet – but it feels, well, so far rather dry...

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Sicily

Sicily’s health chief, Ruggero Razza, is reported to have resigned as an investigation was taking place into alleged falsification of Covid figures to avoid the island being put into strict lockdown measures.

False accounting? Corruption within the authorities? Callous disregard for people's lives?

Could such things really be taking place in Sicily?