I loved the voice of Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, possible Messiah, definite Israelite scholar and prodigy, from the get-go - the first pages and maybe several chapters are 5 star stuff. But by the end there was too little ambiguity left for me, and too much to detest in Gurion's actions, and a couple too many glaze-my-eyes over sections, for me to still love the whole book wholeheartedly. Almost fell to 3 stars for me, but in the end I have to give it more than just a bland "I liked it" rating. Plus it did help get me through a rare 4 day snowed-in weekend with no real cabin fever. This is weird. The book seems like it's promising a lot of big stuff underneath the surface. Any given sentence, chapter, whatever, erects a big marqueed arrow towards something else it's trying to say. But then you get to the end, and it doesn't say anything at all.Which isn't to say that the book is bad. It's too long for what it's saying, but it's not bad. It doesn't fulfill its promises, it fills a lot, there's so much that could have been cut, it seems, but it wasn't a bad read. The last 150 pages were a lot of fun, Levin's manner of writing about action. It's snappy and vivid. His writing is good. But it seemed so much like he didn't have that much to say, or was using too many words to say not enough. So, I don't know. Finishing this book feels like finishing a sigh -- you're feeling whatever made you sigh in the first place, and not much has changed anyway. But you're somehow satisfied.
What do You think about De Instructies (2011)?
I see genius in this book, but give yourself 35 years to read it.
—baso
