Finished. Finally. Wow, did this book take me a [relatively] long time to finish.

Basically, Foucault’s Pendulum is what the Da Vinci Code dreams it could be, tried to be, but wimped out and fell short. The Da Vinci Code is like the bastard child of Foucault’s Pendulum that wishes it could have inhereted more talent from its daddy book. Foucault’s Pendulum is probably the ultimate conspiracy theory book.

And what a book. Eco is a great writer, but this is not a book for the faint of heart. He ties so much into his story line that at times- history, philosophy, science, techonology, you name it- that, while reading FP, I felt like I needed to have a dictionary in my lap along with the book and my laptop and Wikipedia handy. Within the first few chapters I came across a handful of (English!) words that I’d never seen before, which doesn’t happen often. Each chapter begins with a quote from a random book. Some books he quotes from are centuries old. Scattered through FP are quotations and anecdotes in Italian (the original language of FP), various Italian dialects, Latin, French, German, and probably some others I’ve forgotten.

Yes, the book is fairly challenging, but if you can handle it, it’s a great read. I found the whole thing totally engrossing. The book goes from funny to sad to unnerving and back again and everywhere in between. Eco builds up the suspense throughout FP till you want to throttle Eco for putting another hundred fifty pages in between you and the ending.

All in all…an awesome book, but like I said, not for the faint of heart. Highly recommended for anyone up for a bit of a challenge.

I’ve been introduced to umberto eco way before i read all those esoteric/conspiracy/templar stuff like Holy Blood, Holy Grail; The Templar Revelation, etc. And my head reeled. Eco is infinitely erudite. A level where Dan Brown could only hope to be.

If you’re impressed with The Da Vinci Code, you aint seen no Eco yet.

Foucault’s Pendulum is a wonderful synthesis of alchemical and conspiracy literature, written in the style of the same. It’s nice that Dan Brown has a bestseller on his hands, but Eco is the real deal.