I don't star these because 1) I couldn't finish them because 2) they are horrible. I did finish two other books by Eco, one of which I loved (Name of the Rose) and one which I hated with a fiery passion. So I don't mind not finishing this one!

K. You can skip the middle 400 pages of the book and still get the gist of it. Having said that, it is still really compelling.

I finally finished this godawful slogfest but can now say I've read one of these 'Christian' conspiracy books of endless dangerous secrets and secret societies such as Knights Templar and a host of others. Way too wordy and melodramatic, like the plot in this book, the author throws in every sort of mystical belief in this area until I got the impression that the joke was actually on the reader. This is a thriller for the thinking person who enjoys spinning one's mental wheels without much progress to show for it. Perhaps I don't understand the culture or the cultural changes since this book was written for it's translated into English from Italian. However, I do understand that this book centers on the follies of men, and the women characters are attractive prizes to be desired and to fill time when not exploring the hidden mysteries. I guess it's no wonder the main character's romantic partners tend to move on. For those who dare, this is a wallowing thriller not without droll humor but I fear the joke's on the reader.

The 2 star rating is only for the abridged audiobook edition of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and shouldn't be considered a rating of the entire unabridged book.
There is only a single English language audiobook of Foucault's Pendulum and unfortunately it is an abridged edition that lasts about 6 & 1/2 hours which is probably only a third of the entire book. As it is a recording from 1995 that was originally released on cassette tapes there is also a lot of ambient tape hiss/background noise that has not been removed even in current digital download editions that use this same recording by actor Tim Curry.
Due to the abridgement of the text it is very difficult to follow the plot of the book aside from a basic theme of various conspiracy theories being recycled by various characters either for fun or profit. The reading by Tim Curry is surprisingly very flat and straightforward without any particular enthusiasm.

A highly-literate, multilingual spoof of conspiracy theories and theorists. To truly appreciate it, working knowledge of French, German, Italian, and Latin (am I missing anything?) is recommended, but not necessary, plus an appreciation of the Templars, Cabala, code-breaking, and related esoterica. A challenging, but rewarding read. If you find this too intimidating, try Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy.

Some parts of this book are beautiful, poetic, funny, and engrossing. The basic story, a satire of publishing, the occult, and conspiracy theorists (among others) is strong. However, for reasons that totally confound me, at least a third of this book is made up of what basically amounts to Eco doing bullshit free-association.

I remember at the beginning of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (who Eco once claimed was actually a character he had created) says that - while the plot is fiction - all of the various claims in the book about Da Vinci, the grail, and so on, are all true. Eco, meanwhile, explicitly states that his characters are going to make up a global conspiracy ("the Plan") to profit off of credulous conspiracy theorists. Having established that it will all be hysterical nonsense, he then spends maybe 1/3 of the book's total length going into extraordinary detail describing all of this nonsense.

The cover features a pull quote that compares the book to "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I can see the parallels, except imagine that a full 40 minutes of Raiders was just Indy sarcastically inventing a long account of the journey of the Ark and all the false stories that were made up about it.

All of the positive reviews of the book don't seem to cover pages 350-500, which is just this nonsense. The entirety of chapter 75 is a bunch of dates and events that explicitly are made up and don't mean anything.

I could forgive this book for a lot, if so much of it didn't explicitly feel like a waste of my time.

I'm not the ideal reader of this book. I have no Latin, no German, and little interest in the occult. I think you could have lopped off a good 200 pages from this book (everything pre-Brazil say?) and it still would have achieved its spiraling heights and dizzying depths.

Well, at 500+ pages, it achieves them.

Recommended to me by a number of people recently. Loaned by Jascha. Very good. Somewhat annoying because Eco constantly uses languages that I don't read (French, Latin, German), but I found that most of the things in those languages were skippable, and it was pretty obvious when I needed to translate one to understand a plot point (yay Babelfish). Rips the world-conspiracy genre to shreds, and at the same time provides some insights into obsession and value.

Reading this book is like masturbating with crippling arthritis (or so I imagine) – it takes forever and it’s really painful, but there must be a payoff at the end, right??

Update: I finished and yes, that’s pretty much what it’s like. I would add to that that the resultant orgasm is weak and you barely even notice it because you’ve fallen asleep by that point. Your pants may be mildly wet, but if you sleep for more than a few minutes they will have long since dried.

But seriously folks. OK, more seriously.

This is not a “novel” per se, but more of a “meta-novel” or something of that ilk. It’s not so much as a story, as a philosophical essay about the (re)construction of knowledge, the lack of value in having a plot, and being Italian. I guess.

I wish I had more to say but the whole experience was kind of a let down. Like I said, I slept through the climax. Q.O

ONE AND A HALF STARS

Here’s a link to bits and pieces of a hoidy toidy analytical essay about the book. If that’s your thing.

I’m SURE many, many people enjoy this book for the right reasons, but “I’m just not that into it”. So, make of that what you will. I get what he’s doing, kinda, really I do. I just don’t care.

Great book. If you like conspiracy theories, you should like it. This book is the inspiration behind the book that inspired the Da Vinci Code. Complex and too weird sometimes but worthed every second. Be aware: is very complex sometimes follow so many names and so many other things touched in this book.