A Good Story in a Poor Book.

I recently borrowed a book from my father, since he and at least my brother-in-law have read it. It sounded interesting, and I needed a good novel to read (having spent my chapters gift-certificate already...on a comic book...). While at there house before we left for Denver (see Sherri's blog for pictures...) I picked up Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth. It is a book (a long book) about building a cathedral told from the perspectives of some of the main players.

It started out well.

And it continued well. By all accounts, this would be a book that I would love to sit night after night and finish. But I put it away. I put in on the table beside me, and will not pick it up again.

Not because the story is a bad story. On the contrary, the story is gripping, it flows, and the shifts in perspective work well, giving it more body.

But why oh why do authors need to give us explicitly sexual details? Why is there any sex in this book at all? Because their humans, and that is something that we do? We go to the bathroom too, so why no details?

It's because sex sells. But why does an author like Ken Follet (I think I've read more of his books) feel the need to insert something openly sexual into almost every other chapter of this otherwise excellent book?

There are more books like this too. Why do authors feel the need to let us in on details that we don't want to hear? Well, obviously we do, or the books wouldn't sell.

Now, I'm not against sexuality in books. There are good ways of dealing with intimate relations which don't transport us to the seedier side of the interweb or the magazine rack. Where is the lost art of subtlety? And where is our innocence (not naivete, but innocence!)

Thus ends my reading of what otherwise would have been a very enjoyable and interesting read.

So sad.