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Foucault's Pendulum
by: Umberto Eco

List Price: £8.99

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Used Price: £0.57
Third Party New Price: £3.48

Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780099287155
ISBN: 0099287153
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 652
Publication Date: June 01, 2001
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 10083

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Creating worlds within worlds
This is not an easy book to read but now you have wikipedia at your fingertips at least some of the terminology will not be incomprehensible. Like all of Eco's books there are stories within stories about books about imagined books and about real and impossible conspiracies.

The real message of the book is Eco's views on story telling and "popular delusions - conspiracy theories" things that we all want to be real even if they are not, and how the story can escape from its authors.

It covers the same territory as made familiar by the da Vinci code - templars and hidden treasures and the bloodline of Christ, with hidden societies and dark. Cabalism plays an important role in the story especially the view that all the ... Read More:

Rating:

- Superb Scholarship, a little tiresome.
The authorship is superb, the only fault being 150 pages 3/5s into the book where the endless nuances of hermetic, conspiratorial history do become a little tiresome and could be seriousy edited without anything being lost from the book. I'm confident in saying this because the characters are making this history up. That's the story, they are creating a false conspiracy, and Eco includes every subtle detail and nuance of the history and scholarship that goes into their work, which is a mite unnecessary.

Apart from that, I would highly recommend the book. The plotting is astounding, the characters sympathetic and the story ultimately interesting. One has to realise that Eco is playing a game with this novel, and to a certain extent ... Read More:

Rating:

- Not a novel, a reference book of science and the occult
This is really not a novel at all, but a kind of narrative reference book that is surely aimed at rather obsessive enthusiasts of science and the occult in the middle ages. You don't learn much about the characters in this book, some of which are almost as cartoony and undeveloped as those you may find in a Dan Brown novel, and the plot moves on painfully slowly, constantly bogged down by pages of scholarship which, by about 400 pages in, I was happy to skip with no loss of continuity. Only in the last 150 pages or so does the plot start to move along at a more respectable pace. But the climax is frankly a bit of a let down.
I suppose the interesting thing this book does is establish that the real cranks and crackpots who are into all this ... Read More:

Rating:

- Engaging but requires keen attention
This is the third of Eco's novels I have read. I am enamoured of his style and ultimately, this is why I enjoy his novels. As an Italian he displays mastery of the literary genre in another language - a remarkable ability.

Ultimately, I was unable to appreciate this particular novel's deep knowledge and arcana. That is a failing on my part. I imagine that many readers may face the same degree of bewilderment at the level of historical detail that fills many of the pages, and for those that can, you are in for a treat.

My admiration for Eco is definetely for style. I still enjoyed Foucault's Pendulum, but for the sound of the words rather than the plot.

Rating:

- What exactly do theoretical physicists know?
When one starts a review of a book with the words, "I am a theoretical physicist", one instinctively knows that what is to follow can only be regarded as twaddle. I could for instance, start this review with the words "I am an amateur astronomer" as my love for astronomy knows no bounds. But would that make me eligible for reviewing a book? Regarding ones occupation or interest as a pre-cursor for starting a review, tends one to think that the reviewer thinks he or she knows something that the rest of us do not, and so therefore is more knowledgeable or qualified to give us a critical insight about the subject in hand. Even now, I could probably bore the reader of this review, if indeed anyone is reading this, about light speed and its effects on ... Read More:

Books : Foucault's Pendulum