The Armor of Light

 

 

The Armor of Light – Ken Follett

As I write this in 2024, I have a serious question: Do they still show soap operas on daytime tv?  I remember being a kid in the 1970s when soap operas were the only thing on television from the late-morning until the early-afternoon.  I’m guessing, between the 3 networks (which is all we had back then), there were probably about 20 different shows. Being a kid, this was the worst part of the day if one wanted to watch TV.   Once I started college, my roommate and I did start to watch “As the World Turns” fairly regularly (he was a fan before we became roommates), and I probably was a devout watcher for about six months.

I quickly became bored and frustrated, though, and gave up.  The show was too contrived, too forced, too redundant, and the same characters had the same problems (usually around love, sex, infidelity, etc.) over and over again.  I just thought it was a cheap way to try to tell a good story.   I’m ranting about soap operas because, sadly, this is exactly what the majority of Ken Follett novels are.  They’re essentially boring repetitive soap operas.   A lot of people like them though, so Follett keeps churning them out and probably enjoys regular meetings with his accountant.  I just can’t really take it anymore.

This book is the 5^th of his “Kingsbridge” series.  The first book in the series, “The Pillars of the Earth” was outstanding, and as much as I tend to dismiss Follett, he does have a few outstanding offerings. “Pillars” is one of the very best of any author I’ve read, and there are multitudes who agree with me.  Maybe since it was so successful, Follett chose to keep telling the story?  It’s sad because he hasn’t come close to replicating the original, and every one of these “Kingsbridge” books are essentially exactly the same.  Now, I think the first book took place in 11^th century England.  By the time we get to this one, we’re now in the early 19^th.  If I was highly astute, I may be able to remember everyone in this fictitious history, and I might be able to remember who is a descendant of whom etc. but none of that is really important.   This is the same tired old soap opera.    In fact, one thing about soap operas that even admirers will concede, is that you don’t have to watch the episodes every day.  You can tune out for a couple of weeks, resume watching, and basically not miss anything.  Same is true here.  My guess is that if you stop at page 200, and then skip to say, page 350 and resume reading, you won’t miss anything important.   I didn’t actually do that, but now wish I had.

Since we’re now in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the textile industry is front and center.  This is how our characters make their livings in this story.  We read about all sorts of groundbreaking inventions and gizmos that these characters use to work easier and faster due to the impact of said gadgets.  There’s an awful lot of detail of how these new-fangled machines actually work. Yawn. Of course, most of these characters aren’t well off financially and there are plenty of mean-spirited rich aristocrats in the towns who hate everything decent and are dumped into this story to make our heroes lives even more miserable.  Everything is crooked in dear old Kingsbridge, and fate conspires to make our protagonists lives much more miserable than they really need to be.  Did I mention it’s like a soap opera?

Then, of course, there are plenty of women who are also oppressed, and they’re all married to abusive, uncaring brutes.  So the women stray and mess around with the poor, but good-natured characters.  So of course we have several unwanted pregnancies with these women trying to “conceal the truth” as to who the real father is etc etc.   You really wish Ken Follett would write about something else for a change, but again, I guess his fans like the same old same old.

There’s also lots of conflict (as there always is in his novels) around religion.  Follett is never necessarily antagonist towards belief, but he’s constantly bashing the state churches in his books and every clergy member is as evil as evil can be.  This book talks a lot about the “invention” of Methodism and how these Methodists are trying to break away from the Church of England to be more of who God thinks his worshippers should be.  Not a bad idea to include in a story, but Follett’s treatment just comes across as cheap and unoriginal.

About 70% through the book, the focus changes to the perpetual war with France, and all of our heroes (male and female) are now thrown into what seems a separate novel.  The war, rather than the textile industry is now the main focus. We read about real leaders in real situations, but the treatment is rather poor.  By now the book is a boring slog.

I’m not sure how many books Ken Follett has left in him, but since I’ve (unbelievably) read every one, I’ll probably continue to keep reading them. I really need to stop.  I guess I keep hoping that somewhere in his brain, he has the capability to deliver another “Eye of the Needle” or “The Man From St. Petersburg”, but I’ve been mostly disappointed with his books over the last 30 years.

At least I didn’t have to pay for it.  I got this as a digital library book.  A small victory. Very small.

Normal Rules Don't Apply

 

Normal Rules Don't Apply - Kate Atkinson

Sooooo many things I want to say about this book, and fortunately all of them are good. I’ve read every book by Kate Atkinson and reviewed every one of them as well.  Although THIS review that you’re reading may be the first one by me you’ve read, I nevertheless feel obligated not to repeat myself concerning this particular author.  Let’s just say that she’s my favorite (and I read a LOT).  I’ll also concede that her books aren’t for everyone. They can be quite quirky.  And this book might possibly be the quirkiest of the lot.

First, this is actually a collection of short stories.  She’s done this once before with “Not the End of the World” but I honestly found that book to be a tad TOO quirky. After completing that one I contemplated whether she was on acid when she wrote it.  This one, however, isn’t quite as bizarre.  It’s bizarre all right. Or is that “quirky”?  I loved this book’s quirkiness though, and I have to rate it as one of her best.  Well, when I say “best”, I mean that in a quirky way.  It really is hard to review such a quirky author and her quirky writing style. I’m trying here, but it’s hard.

The problem with quirky short stories is that they end too soon, and whereas full novels by her are also quirky, after a couple hundred pages or so, you can feel a bit more comfortable amidst the quirkiness since a very good story has time to develop that the reader can assimilate.  Short stories that are quirky tend to be too jarring.  You never really have time to “settle” into a story. What makes these short stories mostly palatable, though, is they’re all somewhat related.  I think.  We have main characters in one story make “cameos” in others.  We have stories about bizarre atmospheric abnormalities that seem out of place in an organized universe that are referenced in other stories.  We have “fairy tales” that suddenly become real (and they manage to appear in other stories as well), and I’m willing to bet that if I were to read this collection again (I may, one day) I could find even more little, subtle connections.

I guess you can say that the title of this collection of stories is perfect for the said subject matter.  Although, the previous title of her collections, “Not the End of the World” just might be equally as fitting.  I’ll leave that tidbit to the imagination.

This would be an incredibly fun book to DISCUSS over coffee and crumpets with other diehards who have read this thing as well.  This is really the point of a “book club”, as opposed to some guy just blogging his reviews of the books he’s read (cough-cough).  So, IF, dear reader, you’re looking for a good book club book, this one might be good.  Again, though, you need to make sure the members of your club are all quirky, otherwise you’ll lose some bookworm friends mightily fast.  I would almost make it a requirement, though, to read these stories twice.   The book, fortunately, didn’t seem too large (I read on an e-reader, so don’t really know).  I did finish the whole thing within a 24-hour period. If that isn’t a sign of a great book, I’m not sure what is.  Quirky though.

How the Bible Actually Works

 

 

How the Bible Actually Works – Peter Enns

This was one of the most annoying books that I’ve ever read.  It’s not that it was bad.  No, it wasn’t bad,  but it certainly wasn’t good either.  It was….well….annoying.  This is one of the books where the author tries to be funny as he writes.  Think about the statement “tries to be funny”.  That’s never good.  Either you’re funny or you’re not, and if you’re “trying” to be funny, it means you’re not funny.  In other words, this book was too “Dad Joke-ish”.  After a while you get so sick of the dad jokes, you simply don’t want to read another word; and if you do read anymore, it’s hard to take anything the author says seriously.

That’s a shame too because a book such as this warrants serious discussion.  It’s about the Bible after all. And if there is one book that deserves serious attention, it’s our Bible.  This is a book that is meant to challenge how Protestant Christians should read their Bible.  I’ve read a lot of books like this lately. Many Protestant Evangelical Christians are taught to essentially believe the Bible IS God, and they think that if they somehow misrepresent it, vengeful angels will appear out of it as they did in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and melt everyone’s skin to ashes.

And if you read closely, the author is on to some good things. He’s certainly done his homework.  He dives into some deep mostly uncharted waters of our Old Testament, and he shows us that, yes, this thing DOES have plenty of contradictions, but that is actually ok, and not a bad thing.   The Bible, he ascertains, wasn’t written as a rule book to every generation of Christians, but rather specific stories that were directed towards specific people at very specific times. Yes, the Bible is God’s word.  And, yes, the Bible needs to be read and studied.  Somewhere over the last 2,000 years, though, we’ve gotten a bit lost.

The problem though is that this author and book are too unfocused.  If Peter Enns were to read this review, he would disagree.  I should clarify that by “unfocused” I don’t mean that he doesn’t connect the dots or transition well from chapter to chapter.  No, the problem, again, is his snippets of humor and comical personal stories that are supposed to illustrate his points don’t actually do so. They diverge too far from the topic at hand.  This is a book that if I were the editor, I would wear out a few red pens with corrections, yet encourage the author to keep his main points.

And, yes, for those who do revere the Bible as God himself, you will have a lot of problems with many of the illustrations he gives.  Why is it that we now (mostly) conclude that chattel slavery is wrong, yet we continue to subjugate women and practice complementarianism?   Beliefs that are set in stone die hard, and if this author serious wants to change how we look at scripture, he should have been a lot less flippant.  No, he doesn’t have to come down as a wicked English Boarding School teacher, but he really should have worked harder to find a middle ground with his overall attitude.  I really can’t recommend this author nor this book.