Tag Archives: Ken Follett

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Digging deep and piling high

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This month, I succumbed to marketing. I'd seen multiple copies of Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
around my used book store, trumpeting the new miniseries. Ken Follett seemed like such a familiar name, but I'd never read any of his stuff. So I figured, what the heck?

Well, heck. This sprawling novel plays out like a Behind the Music episode. The good guys get ahead, then SLAM! back to square one they go, over and over and over again. Yet good triumphs over evil in the end.

I was not particularly enamored with the writing in this book. Follett maintains a third-person omniscient perspective throughout, which I found somewhat tedious. "He said," "she thought," etc. It just seemed a bit wooden. The dialogue is a bit too "modern" to really sell the story as a period piece, despite the obvious efforts Follett made to tie the story into real history from the 12th century.

Still, I'm an easy audience. Despite the rather ludicrous Series of Unfortunate Events that befalls the lead characters, and the inevitable triumphs that bring them back from the brink time and again, I found myself fairly engaged. If you enjoy learning a few tidbits about early English history, the Catholic Church, architecture and the building trades, then maybe this novel is right up your alley. It was interesting enough for me to finish in fairly short order, despite its hefty 1,007 page length.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Pillars of the Community

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Ok, so, I finally finished the latest installment of A Song of Fire and Ice

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That pretty much wore me out. But I have started a new epic -- Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth.
Pillars of the Earth

Of course, Follett has no chance of rivaling Martin for scope or spectacle, and I'm not entirely persuaded by the 3rd person omniscient POV so far, but I'm starting to get into the story. Like with a Disney film (uhh, except for John Carter, which I saw on Sunday with The Boy), at least one parent has to die in the opening scenes or already be dead. Oh, wait, John Carter was "dead" in the opening scene. Check that box.

Back to Follett. Yes, poor Tom Builder's wife gets offed within the first 50 pages or so. Which is about where I am. Surely, Follett won't set ol' Tom up as the hero of the story and then G.o.T. him at the end of the next act, right?

I also managed to read a chapter or so of Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, his 1986 masterpiece in defense of full-metal jacket, no holds barred evolutionary theory. If you care about the culture war struggles between the "intelligent design" folks and the mainstream of biology education, this book is an indispensable resource for understanding where the hardest of the hardcore evolutionary theorists are coming from. Fair warning: Dawkins is downright disdainful of both I.D. and, more generally, religion (a viewpoint that comes out even more strongly in his 2006 book, The God Delusion). But he also is a literate and nimble defender of the scientific method and of evolutionary biology. Perhaps most pertinently for this audience, Dawkins is responsible for the term meme.

What are you reading?