{"id":147,"date":"2010-08-02T23:57:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T07:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/?p=147"},"modified":"2010-12-15T21:01:29","modified_gmt":"2010-12-16T05:01:29","slug":"review-of-the-pillars-of-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/2010\/08\/02\/review-of-the-pillars-of-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of <em>The Pillars of the Earth<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No spoiler alerts here. I read the first quarter of this book, and that was enough for me. Maybe it was because I had just finished reading <em>The Grapes of Wrath<\/em> for the first time, re-acquainting myself with fiction&#8217;s potential to uniquely and powerfully communicate truth, as it does in Steinbeck&#8217;s classic. Of course, fiction&#8217;s potential isn&#8217;t always realized.<\/p>\n<p>It sounded great in theory: a historical novel set in Medieval times about a master builder whose chief aspiration in life is to build a glorious, magnificent cathedral. In practice, Ken Follett&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/o\/ASIN\/045123281X\/\">The Pillars of the Earth<\/a><\/em> is full of patronizing plot tricks; shallow, cartoonish characters; gratuitious sex and violence; and wearisome, dull-headed internal conversations. In short, it is titillating and boring at the same time. Like watching TV. Since the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-pillars-of-the-earth.tv\/\">miniseries<\/a> just came out, I figure I&#8217;m better off closing the book and watching it, since that will cost me a lot less time. Follett observes in the preface that this is his best novel, giving me an opportunity to save yet more time and pick someone else to read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No spoiler alerts here. I read the first quarter of this book, and that was enough for me. Maybe it was because I had just finished reading The Grapes of Wrath for the first time, re-acquainting myself with fiction&#8217;s potential to uniquely and powerfully communicate truth, as it does in Steinbeck&#8217;s classic. Of course, fiction&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}