Oprah Picks Follett

AP’s Hillel Itel reports that Oprah Winfrey has chosen Ken Follett’s 1989 medieval epic The Pillars of the Earth as her next book club pick. While our own reviewer was a bit lukewarm in her praise, noting that "the plot is less tightly controlled than those in Follett’s contemporary works", the novel has been Follett’s most popular, selling 100,000 paperback ccpies a year in the United States and even inspiring an award-winning  board game

in which players are builders who compete to contribute the most to the construction of a 13th-century English cathedral and score the most victory points.

,Librarians, here’s a programing idea: To celebrate Follet’s  Oprah Book Club Selection and to promote his just released sequel, World without End,  why don’t you hold Pillars of the World nights in which players vie to become the Greatest Builder of Them All. Add some medieval music (courtesy of your library’s own  CD collection), some costumes (I know some of you librarians have attended quite a few Renaissance Faires;  fess up!), some mead (check out Halfdan’s Viking Mead Reciipe), and you will have a great party and maybe even boost your circulation in the process.