Weird: Oprah picks Pillars of the Earth

Does anyone else think this seems like a weird book club pick for her? I’m not sure why, but it just doesn’t seem like an “Oprah book” to me. Maybe because I usually don’t like her books, and I love this one?

Wow, I read that book long ago, or at least started it - I don’t think I finished it. It was pretty interesting, but then it kinda went all romance-novel on me. About the only thing I can remember about it is a scene where a mother explains the birds and the bees to her kid in a really practical way, something like “A man puts his prick in a woman’s cunny and that makes a baby grow in there”.

Great. Now I’m going to have to find a used copy of the book so I don’t have to deal with that fugly “Oprah’s Book Club” logo on the cover.

It does seem a bit long for one of her picks, but I haven’t been keeping up with recent selections. I borrowed a copy of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry with the aforesaid fugly logo from a friend, and that book was close to 700 pages. Depressing as hell, too.

I’m surprised. Pillars is an okay read, but I can’t think of anything in the book that would lend itself to much discussion. The scope was wide, and IMHO characterization suffered.

I can think of a gazillion other historicals that would have given readers something to chew on.

That’s the thing. I like the book a lot, but more because it’s a good narrative than because it’s full of deep ideas. I’m not getting what she thinks good discussion points would be.

Really. I guess she could talk about how much easier things are now that construction workers have cranes and bulldozers. Or how they built to last in the old days. :dubious:

Oh God! She won’t try to tie it in with her school in South Africa, will she?

Does Oprah have ties with Follett’s publisher?

I’m one of those guys with an irrational hate for Oprah…
Pillars is my favorite book…

I’m… I’m not exactly sure what to do right now…

I know several people that love the book for the descriptions of cathedrals and cathedral building. Most of them women that I wouldn’t have expected would be interested in this facet. I could see building a discussion along these lines and then expanding it to man’s desire or need to have these incredible places of worship.

There are also themes about independent women fighting for their freedom in a time when women were defined soley by their genitals.

One theme that particularly struck me was the mammoth discrepancy in power between the different classes. The idea that the peasents weren’t just left alone to toil, go hungry, and suffer, but that they were actively abused and misused really sunk in for me.

As an aside, I read the book 10 years ago, but just saw my first cathedral, St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, just last year. I don’t know why, but I had no idea they were so freaking huge. I think I would have appreciated the cathedral building portion of the book if I better understood the scope of the project.

I haven’t read Pillars but it is one of those books being passed around in my family.

I have actually liked many Oprah picks, but I was completely turned off with her choice: A Million Little Pieces. It was obvious to me that the narrative was fabricated from the beginning. When the guy sat through a root canal without anesthesia, I closed the book and consciously steered clear of Oprah and her book club.

I read it for the first time during a 3 week tour of France. I can’t imagine having picked a better book (and I didn’t do it on purpose!) Reading about the cathedrals then going to visit them on the same day was pretty cool.

I’m reading a historical now (Eifelheim by Michael Flynn) and the peasants in this book aren’t treated like that. They work hard, and the lord of the manor treats them like property, but property that he needs to maintain and protect. They’re an important part of manor life and he recognizes that. If someone abused his peasants, they’d be in trouble.

I don’t know how historically accurate this is – maybe this lord is unusual for the time – but it makes sense that a lord wouldn’t abuse the people he depends on to provide him with much of his wealth.

That sounds a lot like the argument about why masters would not abuse slaves… but we know that some masters did abuse their slaves. IANAMedieval Historian, but I suspect that some lords treated their peasants fairly well, some didn’t, and it was probably hard to do anything about it if you had a lord who didn’t. Just like the situation for slaves in that way.

I really glommed onto the theme of rule of law versus arbitrary personal rule. There was one discussion in the book where one of the characters (I think it was Waleran) said, “Philip thinks the law should be king”. I thought the ending fit in well with that theme, because it showed

the king receiving at least a symbolic punishment for something he had ordered done, which showed that he was not above the law

You’re right on all these points…I shouldn’t have said that there’s NO deep ideas. It’s just that it’s a VERY long book, and seems like a meandering way to get to discussions of social issues, which are the types of things Oprah likes to get into in her club.

True. IANAMH either, but Flynn’s book has made me think that maybe I don’t understand what a peasant was. I’m thinking a peasant is more like a tenant farmer or a sharecropper. Not a slave – peasants had personal if not economic freedom. A peasant would be higher in status than a serf, who was more like an indentured servant.

Historians, weigh in!

Maybe I’m not remembering this book as well as I thought. I had to put the new one aside for right now, due to time constraints. Maybe I’ll re-read this one first (although that will make me feel like one of Oprah’s minions!)

I thought that it was the worst book ever. It’s been year since I read it, but I remember having a real problem with characters using words or phrases from modern times. It constantly took me right out of the book.

“Peasant” is one of those words that encompasses a range of meanings. Basically, a peasant is just a rural farmer/farm worker in a preindustrial economy, and peasants ran the economic gamut. Basically, oversimplifying, most peasants were either free or serfs.

Free peasants either owned their own land or rented it from landowners. Serfs were given land by landowners in exchange for spending a certain amount of time working on the landowner’s lands. They were generally bound to the land and couldn’t leave without the landlord’s permission.

IANAMH either, but I like the definitions in wikipedia under serfdom. Wikipedia defines four classes of peasants: Freemen, Villeins, Cottagers, and Slaves and describes the differences in freedoms for each.

FWIW I wasn’t disagreeing with your original post at all, I was just brain-storming about what could be points of discussion for the book club. I agree with your quote above; I think the narrative was the primary purpose of the book and the social issues were side-effects of describing the period. I don’t know how historically accurate the books is. I remember being skeptical when the princess started her own wool business. Although I thought the independent, crazy single-mom that lived in the forest seemed reasonable.

One thing I liked about the book was the fact that it showed life was hard and most of the character’s attempts out-right failed. It takes a lot of pages to get this point across and still have a satisfying story. I thought the book worked well in this sense.

That is dead-perfect. I bet you kept reading ahead to understand what you were site-seeing.

Thanks for the link. Thanks too, to Captain Amazing.

The Wiki article says the word “villain” comes from “villein”, from a time when villeins fleeing hard work on the farms went to town and caused trouble.

So is villein prounounced villain? I’ve always said vil-LANE in my head.

Another interesting thing from Wiki is that peasant/serf labor owed to the manor lord actually increased from 1200 to the 1700’s. Things got progressively worse for them, not better.

I read some old reviews at Amazon today. Library Journal says Pillars isn’t historically accurate, that it gives 12th century characters 20th century words and thoughts. That makes me think that accurate, realistic historical fiction must be really hard to get right. It’s one thing to research the politics, fashion, economics – how does a writer convey an entirely different way of thinking, acting, speaking?