A girl I like is really into his books. What’s his writing style like? I like history, but is his writing style easy to follow and are his plot structures interesting?
Oh, FCOL, read one!
Seriously, he’s an excellent writer.
Very easy to follow, not too technical, usually historically accurate setting, fictional story/characters.
I love James Michener.
South Pacific and Alaska are two of my favs.
Just my opinion: he did incredible amounts of research for his novels on history, geology/geography (he loved the geography of a region- his novel Hawaii begins with the creation of the Hawaiian islands millions of years ago, Centennial goes into the formation of the Platte River and the plains, etc.), culture, language, etc… Almost all of his novels span several families hundreds if not thousands of years (The Source divides it’s time between a modern day [for the 1960s when it was written] archaeological dig and then has flashback vignettes from pre-Biblical to OT to NT to medieval to early modern to Zionist era storylines, with the main players in the storyline usually being descendants of those in the previous storyline). While I respect his diligence and research I’ve never been a fan of his prose- he’s very dry, his character development was often lacking (it’s almost like reading a genealogical report- you’ll know the character’s name, year of birth, marriages, children, etc., but there’s nothing particularly interesting about the character himself other than that he lived in interesting times) and it’s like reading a history textbook with occasional moments of dialogue. OTOH he was hugely popular (sold tens of millions of books and was the richest living author at one time [made more than $100 million in donations to various charities and universities when he died]) so a lot of people disagree with me.
I loved James Michener, and have most of his books… one of my favorite excerpts from his books is from Hawaii, and is set during the journey of a Polynesian people to there new home(circa 800AD). On the boat Teroro is studying the stars and as the canoe sails northward begins to notice the pole star, which he’d never seen. It frightens him at first, a star that does not move, but then he starts to think about it and gradually reasons out that if a sailor can see it he will know how far north or south he is. Michener described this action, that of using evidence given to reason out a new concept, “the greatest thing a mind can do”. I read the book at a fairly young age, and that just struck me, and I’ve always remembered it.
I liked most, if not all, of his books, The Source, Centennial, Hawaii, and The Drifters being favorites. One excellent non-fiction work was Kent State-What Happened and Why. A lot of backstory on those involved, the times, and the aftermath as well. Some trivia too, like the house in Psycho is a copy of one in Kent.
I love J.M.'s work but he is wordy - won’t use 10 words if he can say it in 30.