We just finished reading the interminable Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. We have been hearing rave reviews all over the place, it won the Audible 2008 Tournament of Audiobooks, and it is an Oprah's Book Club book. (We have watched plenty of Oprah, whom we don't especially love, but she has decent taste in books, most of the time anyways....)Ken Follett is a cheap fiction author, and hist writing illustrates that. He sets down to write a novel about cathedral building in the middle-ages and ends up writing an interesting manuscript on love (and that ridiculous human practice, monogamy), religion, malice, treachery, and triumph. The book was predictable in a substantial way, but we enjoyed the plot, and it seemed to pass by much quicker than its size would suggest.
Quick vote: Did we like this book? Yes. Would we recommend it to our loyal readers? We're not sure. If you're stuck in a rainstorm and this book is the only decent one available, go for it, it was a fun read. But it was by no means a lyrical masterpiece. We give it a C.
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