Review of "The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I feel like this book would have been better suited to have been two separate books instead: one of Columbus' life from Hernando's point of view, and one involving the library Hernando attempted to create. There were interesting bits, but I felt like there wasn't a lot connecting one thought or chapter to the next. I'm also not a huge history buff and was more reading this book for the library/book parts, and found the extensive cultural and historical contexts for each of Hernando's purchases rather tiring. Without a stronger connecting thread, this book just felt like a string of interesting period factoids strung together.