The jet-setter's reading list
I'm finally getting around to catching up on the blog after a fantastic two-week honeymoon in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. My other blog covers all the relevant details of the journey, so no need to bore you here with that stuff.
We travelled around by train a fair amount while we were over there, so I was able to get quite a lot of reading done. I'd specially selected three BFBs (big fat books) for the trip. The books had to meet stringent standards: more than 700 pages long, dense enough prose so that I don't speed through it too fast, books I'd feel OK abandoning on a train or in a hotel once they were done, and mass-market paperbacks only, please. We backpacked through the trip with smallish (think slightly bigger than a typical school backpack) bags, so I had no interest in lugging heavy, space-hogging hardbacks all over Bavaria and Tirol. The books that made the cut were: Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, James Michener's The Source, and Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness. Since I'm so far behind, I'm doing the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of my normal reviews.
I started the trip with The Pillars of the Earth, after my maid of honor gave me her fierce endorsement. It's a fictionalized account of the building of one of the first "soaring cathedrals" in England. It follows the lives of the various people involved in the project, including the local prior, the mason, the major landholder, and a forest-dwelling family of unknown origin. It turned out to be a great read for the first part of our trip, as we were visiting a number of castles and other historic sites. I'd never really thought about how these types of buildings were constructed without all the modern tools and equipment we have today, and the book was entertaining from that perspective. It's also quite action-packed which keeps the plot humming swiftly. My one gripe with the writing is a common flaw among male authors - not knowing how to write the woman in a romantic scene. I actually groaned a couple of times reading his descriptions. Some male authors get it right, but by and large, it seems to take one to know one.
After polishing off the last chapters in the medieval walled city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany, I started in on Michener's historical epic The Source. The book traces the development of Judaic civilization from the beginnings of monotheistic worship through to the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, using an archaelogical dig in the 1960's as a framework. Like all of Michener's work, it's a very dense and very long book that attempts to encompass more than you'd think was possible. As a result it's slow in places and the sheer breadth of the book of can becoming overwhelming. Overall it's an interesting book, but it really helps if you have some background in Judaic civ., which, because I am a huge dork, I do. Not bad, but not great either.
After abandoning The Source on the Salzburg-Munich inter-city train, I started in Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness. It's a historical mystery involving the abduction of the Spanish ambassador's infant daughter just as tensions between the Americans and the Spanish are heating up as they move towards the rather uncreatively named Spanish-American war. The crack team of investigators on the case includes a child psychologist (or alienist, as they called them then), a reformed child thief, a pair of brother cops, a strong-but-silent black butler, and a staunchly feminist reformer turned private investigator. The team quickly learns that the abduction may be part of a far more sinister plot and the young girl's life is likely in jeopardy. With few leads, they use their broad range of skills to capture the perpetrator. The book reads as though it's the novelization of CSI: The Victorian Era - lots of forensics, a breakneck plot, and multiple threads coming together at the last possible second. It entertains, sure, but it's not the highbrow fare that the artfully designed cover would have you believe. Perfect for a long plane ride home though - it really doesn't matter if you fall asleep in the middle.
We travelled around by train a fair amount while we were over there, so I was able to get quite a lot of reading done. I'd specially selected three BFBs (big fat books) for the trip. The books had to meet stringent standards: more than 700 pages long, dense enough prose so that I don't speed through it too fast, books I'd feel OK abandoning on a train or in a hotel once they were done, and mass-market paperbacks only, please. We backpacked through the trip with smallish (think slightly bigger than a typical school backpack) bags, so I had no interest in lugging heavy, space-hogging hardbacks all over Bavaria and Tirol. The books that made the cut were: Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, James Michener's The Source, and Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness. Since I'm so far behind, I'm doing the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of my normal reviews.
I started the trip with The Pillars of the Earth, after my maid of honor gave me her fierce endorsement. It's a fictionalized account of the building of one of the first "soaring cathedrals" in England. It follows the lives of the various people involved in the project, including the local prior, the mason, the major landholder, and a forest-dwelling family of unknown origin. It turned out to be a great read for the first part of our trip, as we were visiting a number of castles and other historic sites. I'd never really thought about how these types of buildings were constructed without all the modern tools and equipment we have today, and the book was entertaining from that perspective. It's also quite action-packed which keeps the plot humming swiftly. My one gripe with the writing is a common flaw among male authors - not knowing how to write the woman in a romantic scene. I actually groaned a couple of times reading his descriptions. Some male authors get it right, but by and large, it seems to take one to know one.
After polishing off the last chapters in the medieval walled city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany, I started in on Michener's historical epic The Source. The book traces the development of Judaic civilization from the beginnings of monotheistic worship through to the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, using an archaelogical dig in the 1960's as a framework. Like all of Michener's work, it's a very dense and very long book that attempts to encompass more than you'd think was possible. As a result it's slow in places and the sheer breadth of the book of can becoming overwhelming. Overall it's an interesting book, but it really helps if you have some background in Judaic civ., which, because I am a huge dork, I do. Not bad, but not great either.
After abandoning The Source on the Salzburg-Munich inter-city train, I started in Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness. It's a historical mystery involving the abduction of the Spanish ambassador's infant daughter just as tensions between the Americans and the Spanish are heating up as they move towards the rather uncreatively named Spanish-American war. The crack team of investigators on the case includes a child psychologist (or alienist, as they called them then), a reformed child thief, a pair of brother cops, a strong-but-silent black butler, and a staunchly feminist reformer turned private investigator. The team quickly learns that the abduction may be part of a far more sinister plot and the young girl's life is likely in jeopardy. With few leads, they use their broad range of skills to capture the perpetrator. The book reads as though it's the novelization of CSI: The Victorian Era - lots of forensics, a breakneck plot, and multiple threads coming together at the last possible second. It entertains, sure, but it's not the highbrow fare that the artfully designed cover would have you believe. Perfect for a long plane ride home though - it really doesn't matter if you fall asleep in the middle.
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