[Gocamino] a good read

[Elcaminomejala at aol.com]

Am in the process of reading a book that hooked me from the  beginning, 
"Journey to Compostela-A novel of Medieval Pilgrimage and  Peril" (can't remember 
how/where I found out about it),  by Bernard  Reilly.The writing is beautiful 
and simple, take this line: "Stars covered  the vault of the heavens in lavish 
display" (Chapter 3, first sentence).  Wow. This novel also conveys a pretty 
good idea of what life may  have been like for pilgrims during that time in 
history through an  nteresting/original story line: 
 
"On a pilgrimage through medieval Spain, a knight and a peasant play  a 
cat-and-mouse game that grows deadlier with each passing day. Professor  Bernard 
Reilly has once again used his deep historical knowledge to write  a gripping 
novel about medieval Spain. In addition to a tense narrative  about a pilgrimage 
through dangerous territory, this is also a novel of  ideas, and will be read 
by many for the moral and psychological issues it  raises. Professor Reilly 
knows medieval Spain very well and presents a  realistic but colorful picture 
of Compostela and its pilgrims. 
 
Stylistically, Professor Reilly’s vigorous prose only gets better with  each 
new novel. This book will interest several different audiences. On  the 
literary level, Journey can be read as a sort of anti-Canterbury  Tales, in which 
the pilgrims are miserable products of the harsh realities  of medieval life, in 
stark contrast to the more idealized portrait found  in some other works. On 
the historical level, the book serves as a capsule  portrait of early feudal 
relationships, under which most of the population  was subservient to brutal 
and capricious warlords. Psychologically, the  book addresses universal themes 
of dominance and submission, and the  ambiguous character of interpersonal 
relationships. Bernard Reilly is  Professor Emeritus of History at Villanova 
University and the author of  several works of distinction on medieval Spain."  





In a message dated 5/21/2007 10:30:43 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
Elcaminomejala at aol.com writes:





"Pillars" is excellent, I  loved it. The kind of book where you never  want 
to 
reach the  end, and when you do you keep wanting more! I once read  an  
interview with Follett where he said that it was his favorite   book.  

Another one I liked is Frank Schatzing's  "Tod  und Teufel,"  translated from 
the original German into Spanish  as: "Las sombras de la  catedral." 

And translated into  English as: 

Death and the  Devil

In the year 1260,  under the supervision of the architect Gerhard  Morart, 
the  
most ambitious ecclesiastical building in the history of   Christendom is 
rising above the merchant city of Cologne: the  great  cathedral. Far below 
the 
soaring spires and arches, a  bitter struggle is  underway between Cologne's 
wealthy families  who control the movement of  goods into and out of the 
city, and  
the Lord Archbishop of Cologne —  Conrad von Hochstaden. The  enormous wealth 
of 
this prosperous commercial  center is in  play — a struggle that quickly 
becomes deadly. 
Morart, pushed to  his death from the cathedral's scaffolding, is only  the 
first  of many victims. But there's a witness to Morart's murder: Jacob   the 
Fox, 
a red-haired petty thief. The street-smart thief is naive  in the  ways of 
the 
political world and he soon finds himself  engaged in a  desperate battle 
with 
some very powerful forces.  
Most dangerous of all is the killer himself — a huge man named  Urquhart  — 
clad in black, with remarkable speed, strength, and  intelligence. A  
Scottish 
lord and former Crusader, Urquhart  has dark secrets that have  stripped away 
his humanity and  turned him into a cruel, efficient hired  assassin of the  
wealthy merchant families. 
Jacob — uneducated and superstitious  — fears the killer is the Angel of  
Death himself. But the wily  Fox makes an alliance with some of the  
strangest of  
bedfellows, from the beautiful clothes dyer Richmodis and her   drunken 
rascal 
of a father Goddert, to her learned uncle Dr.  Jaspar  Rodenkirchen, a 
physician and the dean of St. Mary  Magdalene's, who loves  a good debate 
almost as 
much as he  loves a bottle of wine. 
Can this very odd foursome learn the truth  of the evil conspiracy  before 
their quest to save Jacob leads  to their deaths at the end of a  crossbow 
arrow?
About the  Author:
Frank Schatzing, born in 1957, published the historical novel  Tod  und 
Teufel 
(Death and the Devil) in 1995, with 250,000  copies  in print. After two 
further novels and a collection of  stories, his  political thriller Lautlos 
appeared in 2000, then  in 2004, the  international bestseller Der Schwarm 
(published  
in the United  States and Britain as The Swarm). In 2002, he  received the  
KölnLiteratur prize, in 2004 the Corine Prize,  and in 2005 the German  
Science 
Fiction Prize. Schatzing lives  and works in Cologne,  Germany.






In a  message dated 5/21/2007 10:09:56 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,   
highbell at sbcglobal.net writes:

My  brother has mentioned  it as a good read too.  I must put it on my  list 
for the  post-camino months when I am yearning to return to   Europe.
Bridget

Paul Skip Newfield III   <skip at thebrasscannon.com> wrote:


On the   construction of a cathedral...

I recommend ~Pillars of the   Earth~, a novel by Ken Follett.
It was recommended to me by  several  fellow pilgrims while I was walking
the Camino. Besides  being an  engrossing story over several generations,
the  technical details of  the construction itself makes the book  worth
reading.

Paul  Newfield












Check:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDOTJHbwRj4






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