Ken Follett leaves his comfort zone with this epic tome, which highlights the development and building of a massive cathedral in Kingsbridge, a rural English community. Follett takes the reader back to the 12th century, where Tom Builder is looking for work. After the death of his wife in childbirth, Tom leads his family from town to town hoping for employment scraps to ensure his brood has a means to survive. Meanwhile, a young monk by the name of Phillip travels to Kingsbridge on business, onl...

A monumental undertaking! An achievement to last the ages!Want to know how it feels to build a cathedral? Read The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. By the time you're done reading this huge book you will feel as if you've spent the better part of your life hoisting brick and laying mortar. The details are marvelous and intricate. Follett obviously did a lot of research in order to construct this mammoth book. This is reminiscent of Moby Dick in the minutia of its attention to detail. It acts...

Read this 1987 beloved beast by Ken Follett if you:- Light up at books described as tomes, sagas, or epics. This is a long-ass story! The audiobook is 41 hours. FORTY ONE HOURS!!!- Have an interest in 12th century architecture. But I mean really, who doesn’t?- Want a reminder of what true villains look like. There are some super-evil mustache-twirling baddies here, like grade-a a-holes.- Do anything Ms. Winfrey tells you to do. Shout out to Oprah’s Book Club 2007, y’all!Don’t read it if you:- Tr...

There aren't many things left to say when it comes to Ken Follett's masterpiece. The Pillars of the Earth is one of the most beautiful, haunting, exquisitely well-written novels of all time. It is a ''showstopper'' book not only in the Historical Fiction genre, but in Literature in general. Still, for an obsessed reader of historical novels like yours trully, it can become the standard by which all other historical sagas are measured. I don't know whether this is just and right, but it does happ...

I devour books. That is my euphemism for being so OCD that I can't put it down and live my life until I finish it. For shorter books, that's generally not a problem, but for the 974 page Pillars of the Earth...well, let's just say we ran out of food, my children clung to my legs asking for food, and the floors did not get vacuumed for a good five days while I whittled away at this book.CLIFF HANGER: This book is not a cliff-hanger at the end of every chapter kind of book, which makes it easier t...

“The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.” Look, it's difficult to explain exactly why I liked this book. Seriously, if you take a look at the blurb, note the 973 pages, and the fact it's a very long story about building a cathedral in Medieval England, you might think I've been smoking something. But for me - and I'm assuming for a large number of other readers - it was so damn compelling.I'm going to get the crap out of the way first - if you are sensitive to scenes of rape, DO

This book was popular? As in a mini-phenomenon? Seriously? Am I being punked? Tell the truth--no one else read the book. It was all an elaborate media/pop culture scheme to trick me into reading this book. Please lie to me about this. I'm not sure I can go on living if I have to believe that this is what my fellow man is reading these days.My utter disdain for the book comes from many a source:A) It's 900 pages. Mind you, I'll read 900 pages, even 1,500 pages, if it's amazing. But it has to be a...

I did not hate this book (hate would be too strong a word, and I can't hate it because I applaud the fact that Ken Follett attempted to write an epic novel). But I did not like it. I didn't like it from the start; his writing style hit me like a brick, but Jim thoroughly enjoyed the book that I kept trying to convince myself that I ought to give it a chance, hoping it would get better. When I was about 500 pages in, he saw how miserable I was and asked why I didn't just stop reading it, but at t...

”He was mesmerized by the challenge of making soft, round shapes out of hard rock. The stone had a will of its own, and if he tried to make it do something it did not want to do, it would fight him, and his chisel would slip, or dig in too deeply, spoiling the shapes. But once he had got to know the lump of rock in front of him he could transform it.” There are so many memorable characters populating this epic novel that I would be hard pressed to even say who is the main character of this no...

I know I'm going to be in the minority here, but this is truly one of the worst books I have ever read. I came so close to throwing the book across the room on several occasions, and ended up skipping through many pages just to get to the final and not too surprising finish. The characters were flat and lifeless and seemed to have been transplanted from the 20th century into medieval England. The book was rife with unnecessary profanity that in no way enhanced the storyline and obscene gratuitou...

The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1), Ken FollettThe Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by Welsh author Ken Follett, published in 1989, about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket. The book traces the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture, and the fo...

A tapestry of medieval cathedrals centered around an epic drama and some would term it melodrama but that's open to debate. Ken Follet actually wanted to write this book years before it was published. But his agent told him to build up his base of fans by writing several more thrillers. His EYE OF THE NEEDLE pushed him up to the best seller list. At a later point, after writing those novels and studying medieval cathedral architecture, Follet got to write his 900 page novel centering around t...

7.2 MILLION STARS!Did I just read one of the most amazing books I have ever read? Yes, yes I did!I cannot say enough about this book, the story, the writing, the characters, etc. etc. etc. Everything is perfect! If someone had said to me, “Here is a 1000 page book about the building of a cathedral 1000 years ago in England” I probably would have fallen asleep before the end of their sentence. But, do not judge a book by its description – it is a 1000 page book about the building of a cathedral,

This is seriously one of the worst books I've ever read. The only reason I finished the book is because I cannot put a book down once I start.The writing is terrible. The plotting may be dramatic, but I had almost zero interest in any of the characters; they seem to exist merely for events to happen to them, like actors in a disaster movie. Beyond that there seemed to be three characters in the book: Bad guy, good guy, and good victimized-yet-able-to -overcome girl.What got me most was: Ken Foll...

This book was so completely fantastic that I almost forgot the outside world existed when I was reading it. I’ve never be so emotionally invested in a story, as I was with this. It’s a rare book that does this to me. I think it’s because it follows the characters through such a large proportion of their lives, resulting in a large amount of intimacy and investment with them. Indeed, this novel spans a massive period of forty years and has 1000+ pages; this is no light reading; it is deep, emotiv...

I read this out of order as once I read "World Without End," I was so captivated that I had to go back to read this one. It was good, but I much preferred "World Without End."Follett creates such a remarkable world full of characters you love and you hate. And to think it takes place over 500 years ago... so many historical adventures, realities... I love the relationship people had with the church -- not so much from a religious perspective, but in how it defined every action and thought in the...

EpicIf you ever wanted to use the words Epic and Classic in a book review, The Pillars of the Earth is a book that upholds that accolade. It is a fabulous masterpiece of historical fiction, based in England in the 12th Century. The sense of time and place are vividly drawn and the fragility and harshness of life shadow each of the characters. The array of characters are impressively developed, and with over 1000 pages in the novel, this becomes a generational journey spanning many decades and gi...

This was incredible. After reading this for weeks, I'll need a bit to sort out my thoughts on this one. Review to come. Also, how great is the feeling when you're the first person to check out a brand new replacement copy via the library?

Confession time: This is not a book I would have picked out for myself. First of all, look at the size of this kitten squisher! Second of all, Amanda's hate-filled review of it is one of my favorite reviews on Goodreads. However, it's one of my girlfriend's favorite books and when she suggested I give it a read, I knew what was good for me. Lucky for me, I enjoyed it.Pillars of the Earth is a multigenerational tale about the construction of a cathedral in a fictitious English town in the 1100s.

Ahem."Pillars of the Earth" is a very long book. It's got a lot of soap-opera-like twists and turns - no amnesia, but just about everything else, including mistaken identities, illicit marriages, illicit lack of marriage, illegitimate children, questionable parentage, love triangles, revenge, greed, power, a few murders, rape, witches, politics, knights, swords and horsies. OK, that last bit is not so soap-opera-like. There's also lots and lots of architecture. And it's a very long book. Main st...