Convince me to carry on with Ken Follett's Pillars Of The Earth.

Do I love him/does he love me?

ODFOD, let's have a good thriller with a male lead and get on with the bloody story!

Slightly like men in the ruthless vengeance quest but Cersei uses her womanly ways to be a power mad nutcase succeed.

Some good characters die but IMO the best ones are still alive.

Game of Thrones. There's no way Arya or Cersei could bore you

Are they women behaving as men by any chance? I keep meaning to give Game of Thrones a go, but I have been told all the characters you become attached to die which is a bit of a stumbling block for me. Plus, glimpses of the tv series look unremittingly grim.

Try The Observations by Jane Harris and see if Bessy bores you or not.

Thanks, I'll look out for that.

I am like a previous poster. As a teen, I read books by Alastair Maclean, Raymond Chandler, Alexandre Dumas, that sort of thing, and now I like reading Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O'Brien (well, not him particularly but I like naval stories), stories about men in brutal times. Pillars of the Earth seemed quite a fluffy read to me.

Hoonose - a challenge for you! Try The Observations by Jane Harris and see if Bessy bores you or not. I really liked her as a character.

Unusual for me to see a tv adaptation before reading the book but I have to say the misogyny put me off buying a copy. Rape, rape and more rape. It all felt pretty gratuitous so I shan't bother with the book itself.

Game of Thrones. There's no way Arya or Cersei could bore you.

Never really thought about it, but when I was youngerI read almost entirely male oriented books (I liked Frederick Forsyth, Alastair Maclean, Arthur Haley, Ken Follett, John Grisham etc). Somewhere along the line I've changed and read much more female oriented books, I don't follow particular authors so much any more, but most books I read have female main characters now.

How can anyone say they aren't interested in reading about women!? What a bizarre stance to take!

It's not a stance! It is just how it is. Women bore me. Men excite me.

Name me a book in which a female character will not bore me and I am prepared to give it a go.

I read it first time around years ago and will always remember going to work on the train when everyone was reading it,they where so engrossed you daren't say good morning in case you put the readers off their place in the book,I still have that copy and am now going to read it again I really enjoyed it.

My husband bought both books for me. I haven't finished the first, and not sure I will. Though I'm afraid the TV series was partially responsible for putting me off.

I read it about 20 years ago and really enjoyed it, not sure if I would now though.

This is one of the few books I have I given up on too.
Made it to chapter 3 when it made me so cross that I wrote my one and only book review and put the book out for charity.

I enjoyed it. It was a good story. But if you're not enjoying it don't read it. There are too many good books out there to waste time on ones you don't like.

I enjoyed it, the subject matter made a change from the.usual kind of stuff I read, I found it interesting - but then I've always been fascinated by how cathedrals were built

I REAllY liked it

Nope sorry, I won't even try to convince you to carry on reading it. It was so dull it was like reading the phone book. Ditch it. Life's too short to struggle through a book you don't enjoy.

I liked it.
I liked the stuff about architecture and where different cathedral building techniques came from - I don't have RL application for that stuff, but I did like it.

But I agree the writing is not great - I got sucked in enough to get over that aspect of it.
I did not like or tolerate any other Ken Follett books btw.

Shogun is good.
Or try David Mitchell? The 1000 Autumns of (sorry, cannot remember) or Ghostwritten or, or course, Cloudatlas?

How can anyone say they aren't interested in reading about women!? What a bizarre stance to take!

I too gave up, I can't remember how far in, it was the Kindle edition. I thought it was meant to be trash actually, but apparently not? Oddly sub-Hardy I thought, so I gave up and read some actual Hardy instead.

I liked it. Another one who enjoys reading male dominated stories though. Women don't interest me at all, I'm ashamed to say.

I do agree though that the sequel is not worth bothering with even if you end up enjoying Pillars. It felt like he was churning up the same story again only with less interesting characters.

I read the first of the 'Century' trilogy and found it all rather wearing. He and George R Martin both seem to think that a writer's worth is measured by the pound, and both would be far more effective with some v serious editing.

The two released in the century trilogy are really good.

I'm on my third attempt at pillars and still haven't got even 1/4 into it without wanting to gouge my eyes out with boredom