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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
This is maybe one of the greatest books ever written. I felt like it was too smart for me for the first hundred pages, but once I got the hang of it I was spellbound -- it kicked my ass the whole time but every page was rewarding -- it was dense but amusing, beautiful and dark, introspective without being plodding, and intellectual without being snobbish. Read the postscript, and his discussion of post-modernism and his nods to Joyce are so interesting -- this book really makes me want to read more books, and I love love love how much of this book revolved around the library and commented on love and lust and how they oppose each other. The love of knowledge vs the lust for knowledge is such an interesting discussion and I love how it was handled. The discussion of the church as it surrounded the monastery, the conflict between the Minorites and the Pope and how the politics infiltrated them all and actively hindered them in the pursuit of truth and justice. I can't stop talking about everything this book touched on because it touched on everything! Fuck. Truly, this is a masterwork -- loved the regular homage to Borges and his labyrinths, loved William of Baskerville as a nod to Sherlock, and absolutely fucking lost my mind at how perfectly conceived the ending was. I was filled with such a profound sense of loss, of tragedy, but also the ending was perfectly inevitable, even necessary. A pit of vipers indeed. God damn. God DAMN! Books of all time. Umberto Eco you madman.
challenging
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Captivating. A mu der mystery set in a 14th century Italian monastery overlayed with historical Catholic Church dogmatic debate. The two main characters are Holmes-Watsonesque. Think Pillars of the Earth meets Davinchi Code.
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
This book is a work of art. Questions the notion of truth in a time when someone questioning truth was considered heretical. Twists in real historical events in a fictitious murder mystery, but really what it is all about is understanding the importance of truth, pursuit of knowledge and the importance of BOOKS. Absolutely amazing.
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
Un libro no fácil de leer, pero con una excelente novela policiaca... o monasteril... como lo quieras leer. De los libros que se deben leer 1 vez en la vida!
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had no idea what I was getting into when I was sent this book. However, I now know where this book belongs in my heart, and in history.
This is the quintessential text on the language of postmodernism - post-structuralism. William, whom just so happens to be a teacher in Paris (the home to the post-structuralist movement), so beautiful and effortlessly teaches adso the methods of critique, Deweyian inquiry, and a reject of modernist doctrine (what a fascinating tale to situate within debates on religion).
So many times throughout the book, William employs Derridian deconstruction, sausserian semiotics, and the foucauldian intersection of power, knowledge, and performativity. A masterpiece in these areas.
William teaches adso the dangers of ascribing universal laws of motion to things like heresy, reformers, the simple, sin, righteousness, piety, and women. Nuance and the pursuit of truth are lost in a world where everything is knowable and only existing knowledge, not inquiry, can teach you of the essence of worldly phenomena.
“A single body can be cold or hot, sweet or bitter, wet or dry, in one place-and not in another place. How can I discover the universal bond that orders all things if I cannot lift a finger without creating an infinity of new entities? For with such a movement all the relations of position between my finger and all other objects change. The relations are the ways in which my mind perceives the connections between single entities, but what is the guarantee that this is universal and stable?" I mean good fucking lord this book is incredible.
The basic tenant of post structuralism that’s heavily featured in this book is that words are not signs with fixed meaning. This point becomes over emphasized in the conclusion when William discovers the unknown book he so fervently chased after:
“We will show how the ridiculousness of actions is born from the likening of the best to the worst and vice versa, from arousing surprise through deceit, from the impossible, from violation of the laws of nature, from the irrelevant and the inconsequent, from the debasing of the charac-ters, from the use of comical and vulgar pantomime, from disharmony, from the choice of the least worthy things. We will then show how the ridiculousness of speech is born from the misunderstandings of similar words for different things and different words for similar things, from garrulity and repetition, from play on words, from diminutives, from errors of pronunciation, and from barbarisms.”
Additionally, William misunderstands the other monks by misattributing signs to the the things they say, and missing key clues to the mystery:
“Alinardo was raving about a mysterious enemy who had been sent to seek books in Silos (my curiosity peaked when he said this enemy had returned prematurely to darkness: at first it might have seemed the man he was speaking of had died young, but he was referring to your blindness)”
In similar display of this theme, William falsely attributed the deaths at the abbey to following the same patterns laid out in scripture. But this only takes him further from the truth. Reinforcing the postmodernist notion that to asblcribe actually existing phenomenon to metaphysical patterns observed in essentialist theories of the world will only lead to dead ends. Wow. Magical.
If you or your friend don’t understand postmodernism (that’s okay no one does) just give this book a read!
This is the quintessential text on the language of postmodernism - post-structuralism. William, whom just so happens to be a teacher in Paris (the home to the post-structuralist movement), so beautiful and effortlessly teaches adso the methods of critique, Deweyian inquiry, and a reject of modernist doctrine (what a fascinating tale to situate within debates on religion).
So many times throughout the book, William employs Derridian deconstruction, sausserian semiotics, and the foucauldian intersection of power, knowledge, and performativity. A masterpiece in these areas.
William teaches adso the dangers of ascribing universal laws of motion to things like heresy, reformers, the simple, sin, righteousness, piety, and women. Nuance and the pursuit of truth are lost in a world where everything is knowable and only existing knowledge, not inquiry, can teach you of the essence of worldly phenomena.
“A single body can be cold or hot, sweet or bitter, wet or dry, in one place-and not in another place. How can I discover the universal bond that orders all things if I cannot lift a finger without creating an infinity of new entities? For with such a movement all the relations of position between my finger and all other objects change. The relations are the ways in which my mind perceives the connections between single entities, but what is the guarantee that this is universal and stable?" I mean good fucking lord this book is incredible.
The basic tenant of post structuralism that’s heavily featured in this book is that words are not signs with fixed meaning. This point becomes over emphasized in the conclusion when William discovers the unknown book he so fervently chased after:
“We will show how the ridiculousness of actions is born from the likening of the best to the worst and vice versa, from arousing surprise through deceit, from the impossible, from violation of the laws of nature, from the irrelevant and the inconsequent, from the debasing of the charac-ters, from the use of comical and vulgar pantomime, from disharmony, from the choice of the least worthy things. We will then show how the ridiculousness of speech is born from the misunderstandings of similar words for different things and different words for similar things, from garrulity and repetition, from play on words, from diminutives, from errors of pronunciation, and from barbarisms.”
Additionally, William misunderstands the other monks by misattributing signs to the the things they say, and missing key clues to the mystery:
“Alinardo was raving about a mysterious enemy who had been sent to seek books in Silos (my curiosity peaked when he said this enemy had returned prematurely to darkness: at first it might have seemed the man he was speaking of had died young, but he was referring to your blindness)”
In similar display of this theme, William falsely attributed the deaths at the abbey to following the same patterns laid out in scripture. But this only takes him further from the truth. Reinforcing the postmodernist notion that to asblcribe actually existing phenomenon to metaphysical patterns observed in essentialist theories of the world will only lead to dead ends. Wow. Magical.
If you or your friend don’t understand postmodernism (that’s okay no one does) just give this book a read!