The Pillars of the Earth

When my hairstylist recommended this book, my interest was piqued. When my sister recommended the book after she read it in her book club-I decided to order it. WOW! I am in the last section and can't wait to see how everything ties together. This book weaves all the characters together and it is captivating! I am exhausted during the day because I stay up so late at night reading this! I HIGHLY recommend this book for adult reading.

Enough people had recommended, nay, shoved this book into my hands that I greatly anticipated a good read to take me through the holidays. But the first hundred pages found me thinking, right, this is the scene where she's going to have the baby. . .now she's going to die. . .and he's going to end up with the girl he was attracted to earlier. . .whoa, she shows up in the woods and has sex with him the day after his wife's death?
Please. I think Follett was concerned that people wouldn't like his historial fiction and so inserted sex and violence at formulaic spots. Don't get me wrong, I like sex and violence, but the stuff in this book would have enthralled me when I was a teenager. Maybe that's the right audience. I pulled the plug on this medieval soap opera at 100 pages.

I never received the book. I e=mailed the sender but she never responded. I want my money back, and if this is the way Amazon operates, I won't be ordering any more books from them. Susie Johnson

Read the first bit of this book outside the bed, somewhere where you can work at it a bit, because the base is there at the beginning. It's hard reading at first, but if you force yourself to get into it, the reward will be there further on.

What keeps you going through this book are the historical details, the remarks about classic architecture. If that sound like you, then this is your book because all the rest--the characters etc.--are solid and professional. But, if you're not a history addict, this might run a bit long.