Lura Thoughts

Book Review: World Without End

My apologies to everybody that has thought of this before, as I assume that it's not an original thought, but the book World Without End by Ken Follett should truly be titled "Book Without End."

I haven't read the book that this was a sequel to, "Pillars of the Earth," which I understand from reading the reviews of was well thought of.  I actually ended up with this book because I had just gotten the Amazon Kindle, and they have free downloads of sample chapters.  I had seen this book in the bookstore at the airport, and figured that since the sample chapters were free, I'd check it out.  Let's face it -- Ken Follett is an excellent writer.  The free sample chapters, which deal with the characters as children mostly, was excellent.  The problem is that he sets up several intriguing characters and an exciting mystery.  A knight carries a letter that is so important that other knights are trying to kill him over it, and after he bests those knights and buries the letter, he checks himself into a monestery to save his own life and ensure that nobody else can come after him to find the letter and kill him.  Some children who were playing in the forest are witnesses to some of this, and a young Merthin knows where the letter is hidden but is sworn to secrecy.  Hmmm.  Intriguing!  If only the story was about that. Instead, this part of the story doesn't even rise to the level of subplot in the rest of the book.  So after reading all this, I paid my money and downloaded the rest of the story to the Kindle. 

The story takes off instead into the lives of the people in this small town around a monestary.  Two of the characters are so smart and clever that they seem more like characters in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" than in the 1300's in Europe.  Heavy duty archictecture problem?  Merthin is the only one in the book that can solve it!  Other problem in the town?  Caris, the daughter of the town's leading citizen, will solve it.  The other characters mainly serve to place obstacles in their way, either by their ignorance or by the fact of their sheer evil.  After about the fourth or fifth time that new obstacles are put in these two lover's path, I just felt myself groaning, "Not again!"

The problem with reading this book on the kindle was that I never really had a feel for how much more I had left.  The kindle has some dots along the bottom that kind of show you where you're at in the book, which is good for guessing about half way, about 3/4 of the way, but I missed having the actual book in hand and being able to see exactly where my bookmark was in it. 

I probably would have quit on the book, except that Ken Follett can really tell a story.  He kept my interest just enought to continue to turn the page one more time, over and over.  But in the end, I really felt like the book could have ended at several points in the middle and I would have been just as happy.

Book Review: Eat, Pray, Love

I read Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizaeth Gilbert, before I got the kindle, so I am sitting here with a book that is somewhat worse for the wear as it took me a while.  A friend gave it to me.  I enjoy when a friend gives me a book that takes me out of my normal comfort zone, which would be thrillers and mysteries, with an occasional science fiction thrown in for good measure.  Eat, Pray, Love is certainly not one of those!  The book is currently on the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction paperbacks, which I have to admit mystifies me somewhat. 

The book traces the story of the author as she chooses to shed her well-planned life of marriage and family for the adventure of finding herself by visiting three countries that hold a lot of interest for her:  Italy, India, and Indonesia.  She had made a deal with her husband that they would think about having children when she turned 30, but when that happened, she found that she still just didn't want that kind of life.  Her book documents each phase of her recovery from a nasty divorce and recovery from a relationship that she had after the divorce.  In Italy, she indulges in the food and culture and learns the language.  In India, she attends an Ashram where she learns mediation and yoga, and in Indonesia, she helps a medicine man by just being a friend, and in turn learns to be a friend.  Throughout the entire book, she seems to be searching for God and her own spiritual self, asking and answering her own questions while learning to be comfortable with herself.

The book is exceedingly well-written, drawing you easily into the author's inner turmoil and struggle to find herself.  It's often peppered with a wry humor that keeps you turning the pages.  Elizabeth Gilbert is definitely a gifted writer, as it's not easy to write an entire third of a book about yoga and meditation and still have it be a bestseller.

I also had some problems with the book, though.  At first, I couldn't put my finger on the problem, but about two thirds of the way through the book I realized what it was:  the secondary characters in the book are extremely one-dimensional.  I honestly didn't care about David, her lover after her marriage failed, and her ex-husband was simply that -- an ex-husband.  No more, no less.  At one point in Italy, she has a Thanksgiving dinner with all of her new friends, but because we really haven't gotten to know any of these people very well, we don't really feel the love in what is really a nice moment in the book.  In addition, there is a character in the second third of the book, Richard from Texas, who is larger than life and everything he says seems filled with wisdom.  I found myself desperately wanting more Richard and less Elizabeth during that time.  It's not until the last third that the secondary characters start becoming real people.  I felt like I got to know Ketut the Medicine Man and Wayan the Healer, and I found myself suddenly caring how the book would end.

The middle of the book, with the long descriptions of her own meditation and conversations with herself, are not exactly page turners.  I felt like Elizabeth was finally growing up, but then she would do something silly, which I found tiresome.  I groaned out loud when, in the final section, she arrives in Indonesia without any kind of plan.  You mean she went all this time, and didn't have a single idea as to what would happen when she got to Bali?  She hadn't contacted the medicine man to find out if he was still even alive?  Holy Cow.  Luckily, she does do an awful lot of growing in the last part of the book, so that I started looking forward to picking it up and reading it again.

I expressed my mystification about this being a nonfiction bestseller to my mother-in-law, and she had an insight that I think is right.  Let's face it, this is a story about a woman who sheds her current life and goes off and has adventures, and really seems to have a good time doing it.  How many women dream of doing just that?  Perhaps that is the attraction. 

Overall, I give this book a "Not Bad, Glad I Read It" rating.