Just Finished Reading: Pillars of the Earth
It's been a while since I read a very long book. The long books I've read include Anna Karenina, Brothers Karamazov, Middlemarch, Don Quixote, most of the Dickens and recently, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. This latest read, coming after I finished reading Reverte's Captain Alatriste, has immersed me into my beloved world, the world of monasteries and knight and kings, yeah, the whole Middle Age, which sometimes make me suspect I lived in that dark era in my previous life :). Since Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, I got hooked to these period, historical novels.
The Pillars of the Earth is a book that made me kept on reading until the wee hours of the morning. It is that good! Its setting was in the period of 11th century. I followed the story of Tom Builder and his family who after a series of misfortunes ended in a forest with his wife dying after delivering their new baby whom Tom, in his sorrow and severe confusion decided to abandon because he could not nurse it. Tom, being torn by guilt returned but the baby was nowhere to be found. A monk named Francis was passing by, found the abandoned baby and brought it to his brother, another monk named Philip.
I won't tell you the rest of the 1,000 pages but it's one of the most fulfilling reads I've had since I bawled over The Kite Runner. It's about the battle between good and evil spanning among families, monasteries, monks, priests, kings, brothers, almost everything and everybody. I have never seen more evil embraced than by the very monks and priests who lived for the glory of God . Loyalties are switched, enemies are killed, innocents are attacked, women raped, children killed, oh, there was also a civil war. You will never see human evil better described anywhere else than in this book.
All for what? It was all for the building of the greatest and most glorious Cathedral in England.
This is a book where 99 percent is spent on a boxing match between evil and good with the evil always having the upper hand. Then, in the last 1 percent, the good strikes so strongly, so perfectly, so marvelously you'd take a big sigh and tell God, "It's about time!" Read this book and you won't regret it.
It's been a while since I read a very long book. The long books I've read include Anna Karenina, Brothers Karamazov, Middlemarch, Don Quixote, most of the Dickens and recently, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. This latest read, coming after I finished reading Reverte's Captain Alatriste, has immersed me into my beloved world, the world of monasteries and knight and kings, yeah, the whole Middle Age, which sometimes make me suspect I lived in that dark era in my previous life :). Since Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, I got hooked to these period, historical novels.
The Pillars of the Earth is a book that made me kept on reading until the wee hours of the morning. It is that good! Its setting was in the period of 11th century. I followed the story of Tom Builder and his family who after a series of misfortunes ended in a forest with his wife dying after delivering their new baby whom Tom, in his sorrow and severe confusion decided to abandon because he could not nurse it. Tom, being torn by guilt returned but the baby was nowhere to be found. A monk named Francis was passing by, found the abandoned baby and brought it to his brother, another monk named Philip.
I won't tell you the rest of the 1,000 pages but it's one of the most fulfilling reads I've had since I bawled over The Kite Runner. It's about the battle between good and evil spanning among families, monasteries, monks, priests, kings, brothers, almost everything and everybody. I have never seen more evil embraced than by the very monks and priests who lived for the glory of God . Loyalties are switched, enemies are killed, innocents are attacked, women raped, children killed, oh, there was also a civil war. You will never see human evil better described anywhere else than in this book.
All for what? It was all for the building of the greatest and most glorious Cathedral in England.
This is a book where 99 percent is spent on a boxing match between evil and good with the evil always having the upper hand. Then, in the last 1 percent, the good strikes so strongly, so perfectly, so marvelously you'd take a big sigh and tell God, "It's about time!" Read this book and you won't regret it.
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