Makes that Mediocre stuff so hard to enjoy.

I finally finished Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, and I'm happy to add it to the “Books I want to read again the moment I finish them” list. For an Eco, it's surprisingly readable, and layered in such a way that readers of any interest level will get a lot out of it.

At its most basic level, this is a murder mystery. In Eco's afterward, he mentions the idea of the novel was born when he played with the idea of poisoning a monk. He also mentions that he wrote the prose in a specifically open manner to encourage readers to form their own interpretation of events and conversations. Is that person being sarcastic? Is there some kind of secrecy going on? If you interpret it that way, then he is, and there is.

Brother William and novice Adso are traveling to a Benedictine Monastery in Italy, for the purpose of meeting up with other monks in the area. They are hoping to devise a plan of attack for an upcoming meeting between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, at which heresy will be the main topic. When William and Adso arrive, they are informed of the recent death of a young monk, and asked to investigate. To protect the reputation of his monastery, the Abbot wishes for William to find out what's going on before the other Catholic representatives arrive.

And, as this is a murder mystery, the bodies start piling up. As a friend of Sir Francis Bacon and William of Occam, brother William goes about his investigation in a very scientific way. Ask questions, find out where people were at the times of death, look for people with fishy alibies, look for footprints in the snow by the bodies. Piece by piece, Williams puts together his hypotheses, with minimal help from the secretive monks. He even sneaks into their famous labyrinth library after the abbot forbids him from doing so. There is something in that library that people are dying for. Like myself, William is a lover of books and knowledge – no learning is heretical, it is all important. Libraries of that time were literally banks of information, scrolls and books that existed no where else in the world. The philosophical idea of a library that exists to keep knowledge away from people and keep secrets was beyond fascinating for me.


The days go by, there are more deaths, the other Catholic representatives arrive, along with the Inquisition. Eco says he put the Inquisition in the story because you can't have a 14th century story take place in a monastery without them. And yes, that chapter made me queasy, had me biting my nails, and nearly gave me an anxiety attack.

There is so much more I could say about this novel, so I'll say just one more thing: read it. Make sure you get a copy with Eco's afterword (because that's the best part), and read it. Eco hits everything just right: style of prose, action, descriptions, dialogue, I can't find a single thing to complain about. Because this is Eco we're talking about, of course the novel has a handful of untranslated German, Latin, and Spanish. So of course I'm waiting for my Spanish-English dictionary to show up in the mail (Mom, I'm looking at you!), am pulling my Latin books down from the shelf (Mom, if you're looking for your Latin books, I'm holding them hostage), and contemplating getting a German English dictionary. The beauty of transliterations, and mistransliterations is that two people will often come up with three differnt ways to translate something. There's another level for you.

It's books like this that make those mediocre novels so hard to enjoy.

When did autumn get here???

I've been terrible with timely posts this fall, I know. Been busy, been travelling, been playing Fable 2. I'm over it.

The summer of one bowl big salads has morphed into the autumn of one pot hearty stews. We've already had one chili and a pasta/tomato/peas/salami thing. I'd give you the recipe, but the chili is a family secret, and the other I don't know what all I put in there. Incidentally, I read that cayenne is good for staving off colds, so I made sure it was a super hot chili. My throat was burning off, and it's a good thing!

Newsflash! I did finally finish Stephenson's Quicksilver! it was both one of the best and one of the worst books I've read recently. If that makes no sense, scroll down for further discussion of what I was going through while I was reading it.

On a better note, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is both eminently readable and subtly satirecle, two of my favorite things. Even funnier, I just watched the “Monk” episode of Terry Jones's Medieval Lives, and while watching it I could say “those people are in my book!” it was delicious nerdy fun that even Yomiko Readman would be proud of.

Been reading buckets of Steven Brust lately, just can't get enough. Bought Orca (part of the Vlad Taltos series) and The Phoenix Guards (sorta kinda a prequel series to the Vlad books), and zipped through Orca in about 2 days. Vlad Taltos is becoming one of my favorite fictional characters. Smart, sarcastic, scrawny and a smart-ass, sometimes he beats people up, sometimes he pays people to beat other people up, and sometimes he gets the shit kicked out of him. When I first met Vlad many volumes ago, he was young, brash, and an assassin for hire, mostly working for the corrupt Jhereg, a royal house in the Draegeran Empire. Always the misfit, he's too human to ever truly fit in in the Empire, and too Draegeran to ever fit in back in the east, where the humans live. These days, he's semi retired, semi forcefully. Having done something horribly wrong (if someone knows what book this occurs in, and what happens, please tell me the book!), he is now on the run form the Jhereg, who would love to give him an unrevivafiable death sandwich. Hiding out in the east, and venturing back into the Empire when duty calls and to sneak a visit with his ex-wife and son, Vlad spends his days as part muckraker, part witch for hire, and part punching bag. Having a telepathic familiar and being on a first name basis with the Empress doesn't hurt either.

These books are filled with action, sarcasm, wit, sarcasm, intruigue, action, and a little more sarcasm, and a surprising amount of romanticism. Not romance, with kissy stuff, but romanticism. Think of it what you will.

Some fans have voiced some angst about Brust never giving a real physical description of the Draegerans, other than that they are tall and live a really, really, really long time. Humans call them Elves, in a derogatory fashion. But not having a physical description of them? It's never bothered me. To me, the Draegerans are just tall humans who seem not to age. They seem to accept Vlad and his family pretty readily, allowing humans to live in the vicinity, and even meet with the body politic. So not knowing everything there is to know about the Draegerans? Not a problem, not one bit.