umberto eco – Cannonball Read 17

Maybe read the synopsis before starting a new book

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

February 13, 2025 by MamaOrca Leave a Comment

I bought The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco at a used book store years ago solely based on the author. I loved Foucault’s Pendulum and The Name of the Rose when I read them in college and the title sounded fun. Reader, it was not fun. (I also purchased another of his novels at the same time, The Prague Cemetery, and started it just before this book. I read one chapter, was horrified and switched to this book. One of five books […]

Readings about Reading

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Umberto Eco

The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino

The Western Canon by Harold Bloom

How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas Foster

Twenty Five Books that Shaped America by Thomas Foster

How to Read Noves like a Professor by Thomas Foster

Seduction and Betrayal by Elizabeth Hardwick

How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom

May 22, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods – 5/5 Stars One of the most exciting things to feel, for me at least, is when reading becomes not just an act of enjoying and engaging with a story or ideas, but an active hunt for meaning and understanding. I am a big proponent of doing the reading you want to do and mostly letting other people do the reading they want to do. Eco describes early in this collection of six lectures on reading (and specifically on […]

We need an enemy to give people hope.

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

November 7, 2021 by blauracke Leave a Comment

Captain Simonini, a notary, forger, and spy, wakes up one day in his Paris apartment without remembering his past. He begins to reconstruct his memories by writing in a journal and by having a written conversation with his neighbour Abbé Dalla Piccola. The story takes them from Piedmont to Sicily and finally Paris where Simonini devises conspiracies to fill his pockets and further his ideological goals. Soon they begin to wonder if they are not the same person. This is such a clever and intriguing […]

The future, the present and the past are all scary places

The name of the rose by Umberto Eco

The searcher by Tana French

The push by Ashley Audrain

The hunting party by Lucy Foley

Snow crash by Neal Stephenson

Ready player two by Ernest Cline

Tender is the flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

May 15, 2021 by The Book Omnivore 2 Comments

My final review dump and then I’ll be all caught up! Woohoo! These books are about the past, the present and the future. The name of the rose by Umberto Eco Eco is my dad’s favourite author. He’s read all of his books, some of them probably several times. I, on the other hand, had never read anything by Eco before. I had seen bits of the film years ago that had intrigued me enough to want to read the book but for some reason […]

Academic Fiction at it’s Best but also Worst

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

February 10, 2019 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve read anything substantial by Umberto Eco. I’m pretty sure I was maybe a sophomore or junior in college the first time I read The Name of the Rose. Now, I find myself in the position of needing to reread it for a work-related event. In the intervening decade and a half, I’ve gotten a lot better at Latin, and I’ve also been exposed to a lot more primary source material concerning theology, philosophy, science, literature, and history of the […]

True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

January 6, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

(Italian Cover: http://www.formatbiz.it/post.php?id=3937) For the right audience, this may be the perfect book. It’s a book that has been floating around in my consciousness for a long time, but I’ve generally avoided, and I have to imagine that that avoidance has served me well here because I really enjoyed it and appreciated it in a lot of ways. There’s also a younger version of me for more than one reason that would have not liked it, would not have had the patience or energy for it, […]

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