The Walking Drum

Ok, so I read this book last year, but so I often think about it that I just have to mention it. I finished this book and thought: "This is everything a novel should be!" It is thought-provoking, action-packed, and full of interesting historical references. Oh yea, and The Walking Drum is by Louis L'Amour! Louis L'Amour the author of all the book about the old west... but this novel is nothing like his other books (except for the insights, perhaps).

The story takes place all over Europe, Russia, and Asia in the 12th century. The hero, Kerbouchard, is driven to find his father's kidnappers and it leads him on a decade long search through many cultures and different streaks of fortune for our hero. It was nice to read about a hero that was continually seeking to be educated because, he knew, that knowledge was the only possession would ever remain his. He had many reversals in fortune, but because of his knowledge he could always better his circumstances. I don't always agree with L'Amour or his hero, but it is definitely an interesting ride.

Favorite quotes (there are a lot of them:

"The wider my knowledge became the more I realized my ignorance. It is only the ignorant who can be positive (certain), only the ignorant who can become fanatics, for the more I learned the more I became aware that there are shadings and relationships in all things..."

"In knowledge lay not only power but freedom from fear, for generally speaking one only fears what one does not understand." p.85

"What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought. Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think." p.201-202

"Civilization was born of curiosity, and can be kept alive in no other way." p.251

"To die for what one believes is all very well for those so inclined, but it has always seemed to me the most vain of solutions. There is no cause worth dying for that is not better served by living." p.254

"Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it." p.346

"The goods of this world... are soon lost. Fire, storm, thieves, and war are ever with us, but what is stored in the mind is ours forever. I have lost my sword. All that remains is what I have learned and some discretion in how it is to be used." p.362

"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds." p.373

"To survive? What is that? A mouse lives, a fly lives; one flees in terror, another lives in filth. They exist, they are, but do they live?
To challenge the fates, that is living! To ride the storm, to live daringly, to live nobly, not wasting one's life in foolish, silly risks..." p.419

And so many more quotes, I can't count....