The Pillars of the Earth

Yesterday I finished listening to The Pillars of the Earth.  Lisa is in a book club, and Pillars is this month's selection.  It's a very long book, so we decided get it from Audible (40 hours unabridged) and listen to it in the van (while the kids watch DVDs) during our road trips over the holidays and for the inauguration.

From Wikipedia:

The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the time known as The Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket.

The book traces the development of Gothic Architecture out of the preceding Romanesque Architecture and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory against the backdrop of actual historical events of the time. Although Kingsbridge is the name of an actual English town, the Kingsbridge in the novel is actually a fictional location representative of a typical market town of the time.

I enjoyed it, but 40 hours of listening is a long book!  I get the impression that we didn't enjoy it as much as others we've talked to about it.  By the end, Lisa and I were both ready for it to be over.  I think we're also both in agreement that the sexual content of the book was one of its weakest aspects.  It's not like we're prudes when it comes to sex in art and movies, but in this book it was...I'm not sure what the right word is...melodramatic, cheesy, overwrought, lame...something like that.  I wonder if we experienced it differently because we listened instead of reading on paper.