{"id":11597,"date":"2011-05-04T06:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=11597"},"modified":"2011-04-30T10:11:59","modified_gmt":"2011-04-30T16:11:59","slug":"fall-of-giants-by-ken-follett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/fall-of-giants-by-ken-follett\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall of Giants by Ken Follett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I really wanted to read this book, but I kept putting it back on the shelf.\u00a0 At nearly 1000 pages (985 to be exact) I knew\u00a0I could read three books in the same\u00a0time it would take me to finish just this one. \u00a0I shouldn’t have waited.\u00a0 Turns out, it really was a pretty quick read —\u00a0but that’s\u00a0because I hardly ever put it down!<\/p>\n

Fall of Giants<\/strong><\/em><\/a> isn’t Ken Follett’s first historical fiction book, nor will it be his last.\u00a0 Readers will no doubt remember his Pillars of the Earth<\/strong><\/em>, which was an\u00a0Oprah Book Club choice,\u00a0plus\u00a0its sequel, World Without End. <\/strong><\/em>And of course, this title\u00a0is\u00a0just the first in a planned Century trilogy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But let’s get to the book.\u00a0 It covers five families — Welsh, Russian, German, American and English.\u00a0\u00a0Some are wealthy aristocrats,\u00a0like the Fitzhuberts, and others, like Billy Williams and his sister Ethel,\u00a0are on the opposite end of the socio-economic scale.\u00a0 Rounding out this mix are the\u00a0orphaned Peshkov brothers in Russia, an American\u00a0lawyer working in the White House, and, oh yes,\u00a0a German spy.\u00a0\u00a0So you see, there’s a little something for everyone –political intrigue,\u00a0scintillating\u00a0sex and romance,\u00a0and\u00a0some action-packed battle scenes.\u00a0\u00a0Plus the\u00a0multiple story lines\u00a0(arranged chronologically) keeps you\u00a0turning those pages.<\/p>\n

What’s most intriguing is how the lives of all\u00a0these diverse characters somehow logically interconnect.\u00a0 Though I’m certainly\u00a0no expert on the World War I era (the book spans the years 1911 to 1924) I was familiar enough to recognize that Follett had meticulously researched this tome, and his inclusion of\u00a0real historical figures, such as Winston Churchill, seems to enhance it’s believability.\u00a0 Believe me, even if you think you don’t, you really do have time to read this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really wanted to read this book, but I kept putting it back on the shelf.\u00a0 At nearly 1000 pages (985 to be exact) I knew\u00a0I could read three books in the same\u00a0time it would take me to finish just this one. \u00a0I shouldn’t have waited.\u00a0 Turns out, it really[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[80,169,1325,616,228],"class_list":["post-11597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-england","tag-family-saga","tag-great-britain","tag-historical-fiction","tag-world-war-i"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-313","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11597"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11677,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597\/revisions\/11677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}