Our holiday party at Jennifer's beautiful home was a great success! The house was very festive, decorated for Christmas in a warm and welcoming way. We were cozy with a fire in the fireplace, while the grey outdoors was drizzly and cold. We have such a wonderful group; our party is always a high point of the holidays. To me, the book club party means the holiday season is underway!
Pillars of the Earth is long, but most everyone there had read it; and at least 4 of us have read the equally long (and equally wonderful) sequel, World Without End. It was the favorite or at least a favorite book of most of us! A couple of people felt that the book was long or wordy. Unfortunately, even though this book was nominated at our September meeting, thus giving us a slightly longer interval than usual before the discussion in early December; this was not really long enough for busy people to relax and enjoy the book. One of us read it in a week last week! She said she didn't do anything but read the book! I think this book is most appreciated when it is read at a leisurely pace. There are parts that are a little slow, but if you have time to put the book down for a while during those parts, you always look forward to getting back into it. As one member said, the slow pace of the bookmatches the slow pace of life in the 1100s and helps you become immersed in it. With the high level of detail, you can really escape into the 1100s reading this book.
Jennifer had an inspiration for presenting this book: she had written discussion questions on note cards, and she had us each pick one randomly. The cards were numbered. We went through the numbers, and whoever had the card read it and commented on the question. Then everyone else chimed in on that question. I thought it worked well, and I encourage anyone presenting a book to use this method!
My question asked why William was so respectful to his mother when he was so disrespectful to all other women. That opened the door to me to comment about William's terrible and, in my opinion, sick, attitude toward women. She was also a skewed person, skewed toward everything ruthless! I suppose William's attitude can be blamed somewhat on his overbearing mother. There was another question later about William's death, when we could all comment about how glad we were to see him die a painful death that gave everyone who knew him a little bit of revenge!
Interesting discussion! If anyone wants to add anything, please comment!
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