Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco - 641 pages

I was thoroughly unimpressed with this book.


Imagine 40 pages of a Dan Brown novel (although admittedly Eco's prose is much more refined and beautiful than Brown's) bookending 600 pages of three guys sitting around talking about conspiracy theories, secret societies, pseudo-history, occult rituals, mysticism and abstract dream sequences.


I'm sure some English major types would like the whole everything-relates-to-everything-and-words-have-whatever-meaning-we-assign-to-them-reality-is-what-we-make-it postmodern subthemes that run through the book. No thanks.


as reviewers on goodreads commented:


"One of those books where the author tediously says next to nothing, and all the semi-litterati can't figure out what he's trying to say, so they conclude he must be brilliant."


or


"This book consists of predominantly two things: (1) Endless dialogue by mentally unbalanced paranoid conspiracy theorists; (2) Endless dialogue by scholars who study mentally unbalanced paranoid conspiracy theorists. This is not a bad book, but its not an easy read, and not really a particularly enjoyable one."



If you want to read about postmodern philosophy I would suggest not Foucault's Pendulum but Michel Foucault. Likewise, if you want to read a thriller about Rosicrucians and Templars and the like I would look elsewhere.