Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Rating 2.5

T.E. Lawrence was an officer in the British army before and during WW1.  His story takes place in Arab states including what are now Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.  He is obviously a well-educated man, though his story-telling skills are typical of his era and therefore somewhat tedious and difficult for a 21st century reader accustomed to tweets and instant gratification.  

Despite the fact that his story was made into a movie (Lawrence of Arabia) and is probably quite a tale, I found that to read it was actually unrewarding.  The text is about 600 pages, though after 45 pages I gave up.   The book begins without a story.  He uses high-falutin prose to present his list of seemingly unconnected details, almost no character development, no hero, no villain, and no obvious goal. There are some mildly interesting facts about the culture and politics of the people in that part of the world, though these tidbits were not a sufficient reward to slog through such Victorian-style British text.   I presume that at some point the author settles down to tell an actual story, though my attention span could not stretch that far.