Ken Follett: The Pillars of the Earth

Yet another Amazon package arrived today which was very unexpected since this one came from overseas and dilvery was estimated for March 22. Which, under any conditions, would be way too long a time to wait but I had kinda already made my peace with it and stuck to reading Gossip Girl novels which I had purchased from amazon.de and so they were here much quicker.

This is what lies before me now:

Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, Oprah’s Book Club Deluxe Edition. Heck yeah.

I had been thinking about buying it forever - ever since it’s been on Oprah’s Book Club, anyway - but then I noticed that my dad owned a few Ken Follett books and me and him reading the same books, that just couldn’t happen.

But then my host mom, Andrea, recommended the book to me and, really, more or less forced me to buy and read it. I love it when Andrea forces me to do stuff because it always always always turns out to be totally fantastic.

This book is so incredibly beautiful. I told my younger brother who was standing by, completely and utterly annoyed before I even said a word, just how gorgeous I find this book. I told him about a dozen times. But he’s in total denial. He just doesn’t see it. We may not be related by blood, after all.

We all know how addicted I am to pretty books - to their covers, the font type and font size, the way the paper used for the binding and for the pages feel between my fingertips, the way they smell, the way a new chapter’s heading is designed. I am obsessed and, quite frankly, plain crazy.

But this one, folks, this one’s A KEEPER. This book is so wonderful and sexy, I’m afraid that once I started reading, it will be all dog-eared and the back spine will be forever defaced by vertical scars. Don’t you hate it when that happens? I usually pay attention and try to be really careful because I cannot stand a row of books looking at me with their spines all cracked.

So, as I have said, something is seriously wrong with me and my relationship to books. But I guess that’s what happens when your parents have rows and rows of bookshelfs in their office with books who haven’t been treated as nicely and do now look as if they missed their Botox appointments.

I gotta go and look at this book some more and gently stroke over its pretty cover and drool over its soft, white coated pages. And then, if I do have enough time left before somebody beats me over the head with it, I may actually start to read it.

Carefully, peering between the pages, trying to read the words towards the center without cracking its spine.