World Without End

World Without End is the sequel to Pillars of the Earth, which I read last June and reviewed here. Pillars of the Earth followed the townspeople of Kingsbridge, England in the 1100's. World Without End picks up in the same town with a new cast of characters in the 1300's. In every way possible, this book is the same as the first one. It has medieval romance, royal scandal, cathedral building and gothic architecture, and it is very, very long. I believe in my review of Pillars of the Earth I awarded it the title of longest-book-ever. Well, it will now have to release that title and hand it over to its sequel because this book is 1014 pages long.

I finished this book yesterday afternoon while wearing my cloak and sipping a goblet of Meade. It's rare that I let my medieval side win out, but this book was worth it. It's not the best book ever, but it's very entertaining in a mildly educational way. The book appears to be well researched, and I found the story line following the nuns and monks in the town to be highly entertaining. In general I think Ken Follet paints a very thorough and seemingly accurate picture of life in the 1300s. The book explores the difficulties of being a woman during these times, the struggles the Catholic church faced, war and the politics surrounding battle, and the plague that ravaged Europe in the mid 1300s.

Probably because the book is so long, Ken Follet is able to really take a story lower than you think possible. By page 500 or so, you're thinking, "Dude, this book is a DOWNER, is it ever going to get better for these people?" But then you realize that the book isn't even half over yet, and he still has plenty of time for things to improve. At times, the simplicity of the "bad guys" and the goodness of the "good guys" gets tiresome, but after my second goblet of Meade, I forgave this.

Basically, if you liked Pillars of Earth, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll like World Without End.

Update

If you are observant, you may have noticed the more infrequent posting I’ve been doing recently. In the real, non-blogging world, work is CRAZY while I get ready for a giant conference I’ll be running next week. I normally get a good 20 pages in during my lunch break every day but lunch breaks are soooo three weeks ago and as a result, my reading has been making tortoise-like progress of late.

The situation probably isn’t being helped by the fact that I am slowly chugging my way through World Without End, which is the sequel to Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet that I reviewed here and this hefty tome is over 1000 pages long! Unless a miracle happens and I breeze through World Without End in the next two days, a review is going to have to wait until after my conference is over on the 20th. Starting Sunday I’ll be sleeping just 4 miles from my house at the Grand Hyatt so as to be on call and will likely be reading nothing more interesting than the conference agenda and hotel rooming list. In better news, it will all be over just in time for me to wait in line with a hoard of gothy 15 year olds wearing cloaks to see Twilight.

The Pillars of the Earth

And the award for longest book ever goes to....drum roll.... The Pillars of the Earth! Actually, that's not quite true. I'm pretty sure I've read 2 books that were longer, or at least *felt* longer. Number one was The Emancipator's Wife by Barbara Hambly, which was a book about Abraham Lincoln's crazy wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. I just checked and that book was apparently only 624 pages, but boy did it feel longer (word to the wise - this book starts out great but do not be fooled because it actually sucks). The second one was Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George. According to Amazon, that book only had 880 pages. So I guess I was right, this really is the longest book ever. The Pillars of the Earth had a whopping 973 pages! And each page is as big as a sheet of 8.5x11 paper. I'm serious.

In better news, it was WAY more interesting than the two runners up. The story and characters were very captivating and it felt more like watching a movie in my head than reading a book. I was right about the plot being vaguely Dan Brownish, but more like a slow-motion, medieval Dan Brown kind of plot. The story is told over the course of 45 years so it couldn't exactly be described as a "thriller", but it did have scandal in the church, romance, and near disasters were definitely averted by the quick thinking main characters. Sadly though, there were no albinos in this story.

While reading, I thought a few different times that the story would make a good movie. But then I had kind of an interesting revelation - I enjoy reading medieval books, but I hate medieval movies. If they actually did make a movie out of this book, I probably wouldn't go. I didn't even see The Other Boleyn Girl when it came to the theatres, even though I loved the book and harbor a secret obsession with Natalie Portman. And this is not because I'm one of those book snobs that goes to movies and then says "The book was soooo much better". Because I don't, I swear! Well, maybe I did for The DaVinci Code, but that was because the book really was sooo much better and I think even Tom Hanks would agree with me on that. Sorry Tom. Weirdly though, as soon as I pictured this book as a movie, I immediately had a flash of Mel Gibson in Braveheart ala 1995 and almost barfed a little bit. And I'm 99% sure that my near barfing was not a result of Mel Gibson being creepy and gross in real life. I just really don't like medieval movies. Then I realized that I feel the same about Sci Fi books. Sometimes I kind of like them. But if you so much as linger for an extra 30 seconds on Star Trek while flipping channels and I will kick the remote out of your hand faster than Ralph Macchio.

Hmmm... I feel that perhaps I have veered off course with my review.

This book was kind of the opposite of the last book I read, The Inheritance of Loss. That book was all about the prose, and The Pillars of the Earth was all about the story. I felt pissed at the evil character of William (why wouldn't he just die?!) and wondered about the other characters when I wasn't reading the book (would Aliena ever get her marriage annulled and marry Jack the master builder?!). Unlike most super long books, I never felt like the book was dragging and I didn't have to talk myself into finishing it at all. I also liked the architectural aspect of the book. It was interesting to read about the construction of churches during this period. Whenever I've seen ancient churches in Europe, I've always marveled at the construction and it's crazy to think about the patience required to build a cathedral that takes 15 years.

I heard that there's a sequel that came out recently called The World Without End. I don't plan to rush out and buy it tomorrow, but I'm definitely keeping it on the back burner. Instead, I plan to start The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri tonight.

Eskimo Kisses

I'm back from Alaska! Sadly, I am nowhere near finished with The Pillars of the Earth. I was too busy making out with bears to read.Ahhh... isn't he cute?

Oh, but wait! Don't get too close, he might try to eat your face off!

Oh god noooooooooooooo!!

This photoshoot would have been way better if my Aunt had let me touch the bear. Apparently she put a big deposit down on the bear because some bride once had a little too much Alaskan Amber and tried to ride it. They caught it on the security cameras.

But back to reading. I will confess that I love the book so far, but JESUS it's long. I'm about 550 pages in, but considering there are over 900 pages in the book, I've still got a long way to go.

Lessons learned while in Alaska:

1. Don't bring a really big heavy book on vacation. It's cumbersome to cart around to the coffee shops and other places that you might want to read.

2. I still love medieval literature.

3. A bear at a wedding is funny.

The Inheritance of Loss

Before I go into more detail, I will first summarize this book in two words: Eloquent and Depressing. With an emphasis on depressing.

Okay, now for my more detailed thoughts on this book, of which I have many. So get ready.

It wasn't exactly a page turner, in fact there were definitely times when I felt like I was slogging through it. I talked to someone at work today who said they tried and just couldn't quite finish it and she knew of someone else who had the same problem. I think part of this is because there are so many references to the seemingly trillions of regions and countries, former countries, and former regions in the surrounding areas. And it seemed like each region had like 3 different names for its people and then like 3 new names based on their religion and it all just got very confusing and served to highlight my complete ignorance of that area of the world.

Also, without spoiling it, I'll just say that I did not like the ending. I hate it when the ending of a book sucks! It's such a disappointment.

All of that said, the virtues of the book aren't really in the characters or even the plot specifics. The beauty of the book is in its prose and the way it tells the story of India (and Indians). It almost seemed like the author viewed the characters not as individuals with their own stories to tell, but rather as tools to tell the bigger story of India, colonialism, and really, the rest of the world. The characters felt more representative than specific.

I thought the language was really beautiful. So much so that I actually had to borrow Jeff's nerdy highlighter and use it a few times. There were a few passages that were so eloquent that I wanted to go back and reread them. Here is just part of a paragraph where a main character witnesses a riot in the 1980's:
"How can the ordinary be changed? Were these men entirely committed to the importance of the procession or was there a disconnected quality to what they did? Were they taking their cues from old protest stories or from the hope of telling a new story? Did their hearts rise and fall to something true? Once they shouted, marched, was the feeling authentic? Did they see themselves from a perspective beyond this moment, these unleashed Bruce Lee fans in their American T-shirts made-in-China-coming-in-via-Kathmandu?"

And another about a young Indian guy named Biju trying to make it in New York (and failing):
"Biju walked back to the Ghandi Cafe, thinking he was emptying out. Year by year, his life wasn't amounting to anything at all: in a space that should have included family, friends, he was the only one displacing the air. And yet, another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity -- oh the tediousness of it. Clumsy in America, a giant-sized midget, a bigfat-sized helping of small... Shouldn't he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all."

So there you have it. I hated it and I loved it.

I started The Pillars of the Earth tonight right after finishing The Inheritance of Loss. I leave for Alaska tomorrow night so I probably won't be posting until Wednesday of next week, at which time I will hopefully have a "review" ready for The Pillars of the Earth.

Put Down your Drawbridge!

A coworker loaned me 3 books today so it looks as though my vacation reading might be decided for me. She loaned me The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, and The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.

I'm tempted to try The Pillars of the Earth first since it's mammoth and there would be very little risk of me finishing it and running out of reading material while on vacation. I read Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories (Interpreter of Maladies) and loved them, so I'm excited about The Namesake. I normally hate short stories, so the fact that I loved hers' says quite a lot. I remember she managed to cram in so much character development and drama into such a small number of pages that I couldn't wait for her to write a novel. I read Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama a long time ago and remember liking it. But I don't know anything about Ken Follett.

A little known fact about me is that I secretly love books with medieval themes. The Pillars of the Earth is described on the book jacket as, "A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England." I've taken quite a long hiatus from historical/medieval fiction (in part due to my shame surrounding said love for medieval literature), so this book might be right up my moat. The plot sounds vaguely Dan-Brownish, but whatever. If I'm completely honest with myself I have to admit that I kind of liked The Da Vinci Code. And it's possible that I may have also read Angels and Demons. Whatever. Stop looking at me like that!

I'm a little over halfway through with The Inheritance of Loss. The jury's still out on whether I love it or not. I'll let you know soon.

PS - I've decided to start listing book titles in purple font. Does this help readability or not?