Rating: 
Summary: Eco System
Review: This is the second time I've read this book. The last time was 15 years ago, and I always knew I wanted to tackle it again. The only thing that stuck out in my first reading was solving the mysteries of the Knights of the Templars. I got so much more out of it again.It is a tour de force of esoteric knowledge. Every conspiracy and occult group gets linked in this implausible but captivating march through 600 years of historical fact and supposition. This frenzied pursuit of the secret of the universe, who had it? The Templars, the Rosicrucians, the followers of the cabala, Francis Bacon, Alamut. It makes one dizzy to keep up with the entire business. Each chapter starts with a quote from ancient writing on the hermetic arts, and then the fun begins. At times, thick and incomprehensible, it generally exploded through the mind with occult possibilities, and ends with a simple account of Belbo's motivation. Was it Rosebud or a trumpet? Why not mention the town in Italy where he lived, I wonder. The ending and resolution were slightly ambiguous. Fevered imagination or just running out of gas, I don't know. For those with a bent to wild flights of imagination, and the Knights of the Templar, saddle up for a magic ride. Hey, what if it's true?
Rating: 
Summary: reader from Israel
Review: I wish I could give this book a stronger review then 2 stars but that is already being generous. Mr. Eco really drew me in with the ' Name of the Rose' and I expected more of the same with this title . Such was not the case. Being a Hebrew speaker and novice cabalist I thought I had a better chance of grasping this work then most others.... perhaps slightly but the overall read was laborious and painful. To say I did not get would be accurate. I have one more book by him to read and I'm hoping that this next one delivers a better rate of return. Mr. Eco is a wonderful writer all in all and if I had to pick someone to be deserted on an island with he would be a good choice.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the Effort
Review: None should pick up this book thinking it will be accessible, unless one happens to be the sort who can, say, cruise through the Friday "New York Times" crossword in under half an hour. Eco consistently violates, in this work, what I normally consider to be the canons of good prose: He chooses long and difficult words over short and clear ones, includes copious foreign phrases (and sometimes whole paragraphs) in no less than three languages besides English, and peppers the text with obscure allusions and long expository monologues. Towards the end of the book he stops even bothering to put quotes around his narrator's paranoid historiographic treatises, and we must occasionally plow through pages at a time of straight theorizing. However, there is a broader and more fundamental stylistic principle that justifies these excesses, in this case, which is that style should suit subject. And the subject of "Foucault's Pendulum"--enlightment through the pursuit of obscure and arcane knowledge--could not be better served than by a style which is itself a bit obscure and arcane. What's more, the protagonist's professorial penchant for polysyllaby serves an important dramatic purpose: If Causabon did not seem to us so intelligent, we probably would not follow him so willingly down the path of madness. But he does, and we do, and the effect Eco achieves at the end of it all is nothing short of exalting. Think of the book itself, then, as a hermetic text, and as one with real secrets to unveil: Invest some effort, read with attention, and resign yourself to a bit of research here and there, and you will be well rewarded.
Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint of brain
Review: One of the more amusing reviews for this phenomenal book refers to Foucault's Pendulum as the kind of 'unintelligible' stuff that erudites claim to understand in order to show off how smart they are. Isn't that just sad? No surprise then that the most anticipated book of recent times was a children's story. Foucault's Pendulum is giddy, dense Fortean fun: an Eternal Golden Braid of fact, folklore, history, and hearsay, where religion, mythology, science, superstition, hermetic lore, and just plain crackpottery get their tendrils tangled by three cynical, data-overloaded scholars and one innocent computer. From this morass of rosy-crossed-references emerges a fantastic meta-conspiracy theory that sets our very unwilling heroes on a feverish journey towards... the truth? Be certain: this book will require some higher education, and will only make sense if you paid attention in class at least once in awhile. But for those who like a little challenge from their reading once in awhile, you'll be well rewarded by Eco.
Rating: 
Summary: Literally the worst book I've ever read...
Review: I finished this book with great effort only because it kills me not to complete a book. Every aspect of this book is horrible. Eco drones on way too long in minute details that seem to be there only because they were in his research notes. There are pages of unreadable material, paragraphs they consist of lists of useless items. The characters are 1 dimensional at best and the plot, as it finally unfolds it unremarkable and ridiculous.
Imagine a very brainy history or philosophy professor pouring out whatever popped into his head for hundreds of pages and then a publisher putting it out verbatim without bothering to have an editor take a look at it. If they had done that to this book it would have been a semi-interesting, but unentralling short story.
Run away from this book.
If it's a status symbol to be reading this book, or more impossibly to complete it, then I want nothing to do with the peer group that finds such a tortuous endeavor admirable.
Rating:
Summary: This is NOT a boring book
Review: Foucault's Pendulum is one of my favorite books. I was a C average student and am an art degree type person. I'm only telling you this because for some reason people think reading Umberto Eco is hard work. Ok, from an interview I read he sounds like a lame sno, but the two books of his I read were great, and not as difficult or boring as people make out. I have an interest in the Knights Templar, and Alchemy so perhaps this book struck a chord with me, but it's not as difficult as many other celebrated authors, like Faulkner for example. If you enjoy mysteries, or books like Holy Blood Holy Grail check this out. You may not breeze through 100 pages in one sitting like a harry potter or agatha christie book, but it's is still fun and sucks you in.
Rating:
Summary: Pique
Review: The thing I enjoy most about Umberto Eco is that he builds his stories on a framework of a true history that is not only mysterious, but typically un-taught. Basically, if you're going to understand his books, you're going to learn a lot about some things that happened a long time ago that no one ever taught you in high school or college (unless you ever happened to be a medievil studies post doctoral candidate). Rather than setting his Historical Fiction within the relatively boring and overused framework of something we all know a little bit about, he sets it within a shadowy world most of us have only imagined having actually happened. From The Knights Templar and The Real Holy Grail, to the Human Psyche and The concept of understanding God and the infinite... This sort of thing is not typically what you have to think about while reading a mystery novel. I won't lie though, it is dense and it is difficult. i.e. This guy ain't messing around. Eco probably knows as much if not more about this stuff than anyone in the world. From what little I know about him, Fiction is his 2nd career. So while you can bet he knows what he's talking about, you might find that you do not. In the mean time, you can feel confident trusting in his authority on the subject. His passion for the mysterious and ancient is apparent in every bit fiction he writes. The tricky thing for him is that there is a big black empty period of the history of Western Civilization. Long story short, Eco is writing about historical events for which there is only partial information. A page or two here, half a damaged manuscript there. This novel is much more about about a fascination of speculating about those black holesin our history than it is actual speculation about those holes. Perhaps no one is more qualified to perform such speculation than Umberto Eco, but that is not his purpose here. He succeeds in reeling you in to a world whith which few are familiar. Unfortunately there are no clear answers to either the historical or the metaphysical mysteries his characters become obsessed with. If you're lucky, it will fascinate you as well. Then it will become a thunderous ride for you and your brain. If you climb this mountain expecting to get to the golden palace, you will not be satisfied. If you climb it, you will find a beautiful valley on the other side and an entirely new mountain range beyond. You'll also find a pretty good view of the plain you just came from. The end of this book is no great revelation as you might be tempted to hope for. Rather, it's a clearer picture of the journey you are on and how it is not exactly the journey you thought it was.
Rating:
Summary: A Dazzling Work of Conspiracy
Review: Umberto Eco's books are not for the faint of heart. Eco is a master of history and literature, and his books are like a quick tour through a doctorate program in Renaissance literature and history. This is no accident; he is, after all, a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna when he is not writing his unusual fiction. This book, Foucault's Pendulum, is a tour through the conspiracies involving the Knights Templar. Three rather eccentric employees of a Milan publishing firm become intrigued with the story of the Knights Templar and all matter of esoterica, including the Kabalah, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, Brazilian religions including the umbanda and candomble, and the Templars. Assisted by a knowledgeable and mysterious Count, who may or may not be one of the incarnations of the Comte de Saint-Germain, the three have fun in building an overarching theory of conspiracy, which they call The Plan, assisted by a primitive computer named Abulafia. But then they discover that the Plan is actually true -- and then they are on the run for their lives. The book is on many levels silly, but the tremendous skill and knowledge of Eco make it all fun, exciting, mysterious, and educational. Eco has skills worthy of a time travelelr in that he not only has a trmeendous body of knowledge, but he has a remarkable grasp for the history of ideas -- how ideas were regarded in their own place and time. A marvelous work, well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating content, but tedious, unremarkable story
Review: Overall, I enjoyed the experience of reading this book, particularly getting sucked in to the unfolding connections between secret societies, history, and religion. I wish, however, that I would have read about the book's esoteric content without having to put up with the boring, one-dimensional characters' personal relationships and political interests. A nonfiction version of this (for the portions that actually are nonfiction -- by the end you don't know what's based on fact and what's a creation of the author's imagnation) would be a more worthwhile read. The message or "moral" of the ending, at least the way I interpretted it, was a kind of an interesting and unexpected one from a refreshing outsider perspective. But in the end, unless you're a particularly avid reader, or don't mind skimming some really dull parts, I would recommend the point of this novel, but not the novel itself.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time
Review: I enjoyed "The Name of the Rose" so much that I thought I would try Foucault's Pendulum. After all, it sounded like a fascinating read. I slugged my way through page after page of the book thinking that surely soon I would get hooked. Finally, when about 2/3 of the way through the book, I came to the brilliant conclusion that it just wasn't going to happen and that there was no need to bore myself to tears any more. I took the book back to the library. The librarian saw me turning it in and asked if I had read it, and did I enjoy it? I reluctantly admitted that I had given up more than halfway through it. She laughed and said that she was foolish and stubborn enough to have read the whole #$(*&@ thing and still had no idea what was going on! For several years now, Foucault's Pendulum has been our family joke--a book for people who like to trumpet their intelligence by claiming to understand something completely unintelligible.
| 
