17. World Without End

World Without End, by Ken Follett (2007)

It's been a while since I felt like posting about my reading list. This one's from way back in May. I was vacationing on the Oregon coast with my family, and my dad brought this along in his stack of books. I snatched it up for myself and binge-read the entire thing.

It's a sequel to Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, which I remember really enjoying. I don't read a lot of historical fiction, but that one was interesting. My dad seems to like sweeping, epic stories, and whenever he's recommended something to me, I've liked it. He's the one who gave me Michener's Hawaii when I was in middle school (I loved it).

Anyway, this installment of the story picks up about 200 years after the cathedral was finished and centers on a young mason's apprentice and his romantic interest, the daughter of a wool merchant. I'm not going to pretend to be expert in the culture and history of the middle ages in Europe, but the characters didn't ring true. Caris, the female protagonist, was a very modern feminist and I couldn't help being annoyed by the obvious anacronistic behavior she displayed. Also, the story was a bit of a retread from the first book. Still, I liked it well enough to read all 1024 pages of it.

16. After

After, by Francine Prose (2004)

Francine Prose wrote a book I liked a lot, called Blue Angel. It kind of fell apart at the end, but that didn't ruin the rest of it for me. She was a visiting writer on campus the first year I was here, but I somehow didn't get to her reading. I've always meant to read more by her, but hadn't until I saw this one at a discount book store in Seaside, OR, while I was on vacation. It surprised me that I hadn't heard Prose had written a book for young readers, and I was curious.

After takes place in a high school, just after a school shooting at a different high school not far away. The story follows the bizarre and frightening aftermath of the shooting, as the school installs a new administrator and enacts ever-tightening security and stricter rules. While pretty obviously an allusion to the erosion of civil liberties after 9/11, I think Prose manages this parallel gracefully. To a teen reader, I imagine it reads more subtly than it did to me. After really reminded me of early YA lit, like The Chocolate War and I am the Cheese, which I mean as a compliment. I'm again surprised I didn't hear about this one earlier--if it got attention, I completely missed it.

15. The Know-it-all

The Know-it-all: One Man's Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A.J. Jacobs (2005)

I've had this book on my shelf since it came out in paperback a few years ago, but never got around to reading it. By the time I picked it up and started reading, the only think I could remember about it was that it had gotten some good reviews, including some time on NPR, and that the author had written for magazines.

Jacobs, who I learned was an editor at Esquire, is a funny and engaging writer. He manages to make a really silly endeavor, reading the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica in a year, into a very personal narrative of his family, his wife, and his impending fatherhood. I particularly liked his wife, Julie--or, more accurately, the character of Julie--because she tempers Jacobs' tendency to run off in tangents. Very cool device.

I think this book really worked for me because I read it in fairly short chunks over a couple of weeks. Usually, I gobble up books really quickly. This can be like spending too much time with a good friend; the little things start to annoy me. The format of the book helped me divide it out nicely. Because Jacobs inserts sections that mimic encyclopedia entries, it's easy to say, "hey, I'm going to stop after finishing the 'H' section." Portion control is my friend, I've found. So, yeah, I liked this a lot.