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A review by elenajohansen
Baudolino by Umberto Eco
2.0
DNF around page 50. I don't say this often, but this book is too highbrow for me.
I don't speak enough languages--a good portion of the dialogue is in Latin (and not always summarized or contextualized) while a fair bit of Baudolino-the-character's "writing" is in German. Neither of which I have ever studied.
I don't have enough historical knowledge of the era to juggle all the different race, ethnicity, or place names. I'm all for historical accuracy; if what I understand to be the Germans of the time were referred to as Alamanns, by all means, use that term. But that was basically the only one I could figure out in those first fifty pages. At least a dozen other designations were used for who-knows-what, because I certainly don't, and those I couldn't figure out.
I don't want to have to read the rest of this with a tab open for Wikipedia, so I'm not going to. This book clearly isn't a good match with me.
I don't speak enough languages--a good portion of the dialogue is in Latin (and not always summarized or contextualized) while a fair bit of Baudolino-the-character's "writing" is in German. Neither of which I have ever studied.
I don't have enough historical knowledge of the era to juggle all the different race, ethnicity, or place names. I'm all for historical accuracy; if what I understand to be the Germans of the time were referred to as Alamanns, by all means, use that term. But that was basically the only one I could figure out in those first fifty pages. At least a dozen other designations were used for who-knows-what, because I certainly don't, and those I couldn't figure out.
I don't want to have to read the rest of this with a tab open for Wikipedia, so I'm not going to. This book clearly isn't a good match with me.