Ken Folliett: Pillars of the Earth

Saturday 10/13/2007 2:00 am,

Ken Folliett was in Birmingham, Al last night signing his new book at Books A Million in Brookwood. This is just over the mountain from Karen and me, and he was scheduled there at 7:00pm, so we planned to go when she got off last night.

Funny thing, I guess my favorite novel is his "Pillars of the Earth". I tried reading it back when it first came out but my hard copy disappeared and Karen bought me a soft back so I could finish it. If you have not read it, don't let it's size overwhelm you. It is 600 plus pages, about 3x the size of most novels and it took Ken over 3 years to write it.

The new book is a sequel to "Pillars' but takes place some 200 years later and with the descendants of the characters in Pillars. We bought two hard back copies tonight and I had my old soft back of Pillars and a new unabridged CD set of Pillars that just came out on disc. The set has 32 disk, and is over 40 hours of listening. I had this on tape but had listen to this so many times in traveling and the tapes exposed to the heat in my car, the tapes began dragging and eventually 2 of them broke unrepairable.

It was a real coincidence that I had just purchased the CD from Overstock.com and had preordered this and it shipped October 7th, getting to me yesterday. I got the case signed also with the books we bought and our old copy of Pillars.

Ken spoke well, a good and practiced speaker, funny and took joking and questions well. I guess if I had written about 14 or 15 successful novels and had his 'English pounds or Euros" in the bank, I could afford to let my guard down and talk like me talking to you. Really a nice little talk, and he answered our dumb questions, with everyone laughing and then lining up to get our books signed by the man.

I told me I had the only CD set he had seen tonight as did several at BAM. I guess because it is just out and I had preordered and got this when it is being currently shipped to retailers. Overstock.com is good about new books coming out and reserving your copy and do not charge your bank card until it ships. There are several other companies I have bought from that will do the same, a nice touch.

Karen and I ended with coffee at Barnes down the mall from BAM and a swisty bagel covered with sugar and cinnamon. Kenya Blue blend of dark roast coffee and now 16oz. of that at almost 9:00pm, and I am now at 2:00am, wide awake. But I have done my expenses, payforms, reports to the company and now writing this about Ken Folliett.

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings tonight and have a great weekend. Jeff and Karen, Bham, Al.