I Am Pilgrim By Terry Hayes! Could've hated it, actually loved it. (2023)

Introduction

I have read this hugely populare book and I am impressed both of what an exiting book it was but also how much I disliked differenet elements of it at the same time as I gave it 5/5 stars on goodreads. Some books you just read at the right moment! If you have recommendations for me, please leave them in the comments.

Have a wonderful day!

If you want to buy books and support my channel as you do it, click this link: tidd.ly/3BuX8T0

📚 Follow me on Instagram

Instagram: www.instagram.com/_becoming.a.bookworm_/

🧑🏻‍🎤 If you want to be my Goodreads-friend

www.goodreads.com/user/show/135124076-ystein-nesheim

NOTE: My links have an affiliate code, if you purchase books with these links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you! My videos and opinions are not paid for by any outside organizations, manufacturers, or companies.

Thank you for watching!

Content

Hi and welcome back to my channel in this video we're going to talk about a very very popular spieb novel.

If you feel like, I've put a nasal filter on my audio equipment today, you're wrong, it's, just the state of things I'm currently on the book buying ban.

So I don't visit my usual, thrift stores at the moment, I'm going to soon, but not right now.

And I am pilgrim by terry hayes is one of those books that's just appearing everywhere in those stores most likely because he has sold many copies of this one it's about 800 pages.

So you really notice it in the shelf, even though it has a really really boring cover.

We start off in new york where this guy pilgrim helps out the nypd.

He has been many things in his life and has had many names because he has been a spy all his life nearly even though he's quite the young man.

He has been through a lot and is apparently very very intelligent after a while he figures out that the story behind the murders in new york is much much bigger than he thought.

And then the book evolves into many different stories that are connected, but only one person can connect them all on its pilgrim.

Obviously, the events are set in the us, europe and middle east and evolves around the time of the 9 11 terrorist attacks.

I think that introduction could have been about 99 of all spinals ever created on this earth.

But I hope to get more nuances when I'm starting to talk about my own feelings regarding this book.

Now, firstly, this is a big book and that's why I decided to listen to it on audiobook.

And I do not regret that for one second.

I think the norwegian version is around 26 hours.

And I went through it in five days, which is quite fast for me at least, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it since it has the size it has.

I really appreciate the short chapters.

So there are around 50 chapters, and that makes it feel like it's more fast, paced than it.

Otherwise would have felt like even though listening to an audiobook.

I still feel like it helps having the short chapters, especially for a spy novel.

I really appreciate them having shorter chapters where you can keep the excitement in it and keep the tension between the chapters, often you also had different perspectives from each chapter.

And I appreciate them not being too long at the time because then you might get bored, often, I tend to be a bit confused.

If a book has many different characters or many different settings, but I felt like for each of the places they visited.

I could sort of bring my brain to the right atmosphere.

And that really helped me enjoy the novel.

And now over to our protagonist in this story, which I found to be very boring and pretty I felt like he didn't have a soul at the same time.

I felt like the author of this novel was 200 years old and really tried to make him cool.

And that didn't help one example is how pilgrim talked about being so attractive and wanting to be with women and how they wanted to be with him.

But it just didn't mean, anything it felt like reading a page about his own thoughts about seducing, a woman, which was totally uninteresting and will forever be written in the way that it's written in this novel.

Also the narrator, in the norwegian edition didn't help, because he sounded like a creep when he talked about these things.

So when pilgrim talked about women and seducing them, it felt cringy and a bit wrong.

In retrospect, I've seen a lot of people talking about how the author writes about the middle east and other cultures, and how that's not portrayed in a specially nice way.

I don't know enough about that I feel to judge.

But the way he wrote about our main character and women felt a bit weird.

Since I listened to the norwegian version.

I don't know how this is in english.

But he also used a lot of slang in norwegian, which just felt weird, even though the main character is kind of young he's too old to use the language that he did in that version in general.

I felt like this book was very hollywood at times, which is kind of fun, because the author is english born and lives in australia, but maybe that's the recipe for writing very american books.

If you don't live in america, that may also be a thing being hollywood isn't, always a bad thing.

It makes for very exciting and fun books, which I thought this one was so it's, not a negative.

But if you don't like that style, this book really isn't for you, I also felt like it was done a whole lot of research, because all the places were very much described in detailed manner and killing techniques and torture techniques.

And all that also was described in a vivid way, which was unpleasant.

This is of course, me talking about this without knowing anything about torture in general.

But the way he described it made me feel that it was something.

He knew a lot about at least I gave this book, five out of five and I'm now, trying to get my friends to read it.

So I can have something to talk to them about obviously.

And when I try to describe this book for them, I tell them that it's like watching the tv show 24, just very very very compressed.

The tv show 24 is also within this same genre.

But it felt like if you watched 10 episodes, you might have seen one sort of because they always ended on the same cliffhanger.

But this just has a bunch of cliffhangers and they're all useful.

If that makes sense since this is a spy novel, the main character, obviously wasn't that important to me.

I felt like I always wanted to know what was going to happen and wanted to get the answers and that's.

Probably the most interesting thing.

Also there weren't a lot of exaggerated violence.

If I could call it that, of course, I mentioned that it was torture, but it's, not a glorification of violence, which tends to be boring that felt weird to say, but you probably know what I mean that being said, I felt like I was lucky that I liked this book this time because it didn't have a lot going for it.

I disliked our main character.

I felt he was lame and stupid and too great at times like the greatest spy who ever lived.

And everyone is in awe of him all the time when I'm sitting here.

Now I think that if I started reading this book the day before or the day after I might have hated the novel just because I was in a different mood.

And of course, that is something that affects all my reading.

But especially with this book, there was some many things that could have gone completely the opposite way regarding the main character, for example, but also the feeling of the book being quote, unquote, american and hollywood and all that.

So I consider myself lucky that I read it at the time I did.

And it felt great.

I really really enjoyed this novel, which makes me think that I should have read.

John de garis books earlier.

I haven't read any of them.

So if you have a suggestion for one of his books that I should read or recommendations in the spy genre, which I obviously enjoy just please comment below and give me suggestions.

I haven't really felt that I belonged in the crime fiction part of books, but maybe spy novels is a thing for me, at least I like this one.

But as I said at the right time, so thank you for watching this video, if you have read this novel, please feel free to comment your thoughts below and I'll see you in the next one bye.

You.