Umberto Eco Books

I have simply loved every other novel by Umberto Eco I've read. I started with Foucault's Pendulum which I read in college and is still one of my all-time favorite books. Of course, I then went on to read The Name of the Rose which was also great.

More recently I've read Baudolino which I thoroughly enjoyed as well - and which is a much easier read than most of Eco's stuff.

I own The Island of the Day Before in a hard-copy that I bought at Half Price Books, and I'm sorry to say I still haven't finished it.

I've forced myself to finish even some really horrendous novels, but for some reason I can't get through this. I'm such a big fan it bothers me and I can't help but wonder if it's Eco's fault or his English translator.

My advice is to read anything else by Umberto Eco, but not this one.

This is a tough book to criticize. I really wanted to like this book. I really wanted to understand the point of the book and the first, second, and third order themes in it. I wanted to put together the puzzle that was in front of me and decipher the hidden symbolism to find the "real" story hidden within. Bah, I couldn't find any of that. It was very difficult to pull the information out of this story and very difficult to get through.

As for getting through it, after a few hundred pages I was used to his writing style and was able to skim over the half-page paragraphs that consist of nothing but adjectives about a trivial portion of the story. As another reviewer put it: "He spends too much time discussing something too small". I raced to get through it, not because it kept me on the edge of my seat, but because I wanted it over and done with. Much like the main character, I wanted my exile in that story to end! Unfortunately even the ending was very unsatisfying. If I didn't know any better I would say that Eco got bored with the story and his character and gave up as well. As it wrapped up, the story did seem to mount a comeback with a twist on the horizon but then even that fell flat. The fictitious story within a fictitious story was too much and seemed contrived. It seemed like Eco tossed his protagonist into a state where he, Eco, could pontificate on anything he desired and, on that day of writing, just went ape-nuts on his keyboard.

Anyway, it was a tough read and I think that most people who gave this four or more stars enjoy having an "Eco" book on their book shelf so they look like they know something. I bet most of them don't understand the book any more than I do. I notice that most positive reviews are beefed up with some useless book-jacket summary and follows that up with a serious author-love fest and do NOT go into any of the meanings of the story that they so liberally claim to understand.

So, I'm giving this story two stars. It would've gotten one star but the concept was good, the execution was bad.



Here's what I would've changed:
1. If Ferrante is in fact real, he should've been confronted with him at the end.
2. If Ferrante is in fact an alter ego of Roberto, it should've been proven to him at the end that his internally constructed character did in fact exist and caused this misery. Something like seeing the body of Lilia wash ashore.
3. I understand that the author wants us to understand things in a relative sense to what Roberto knew, however, there should've been some twist to the fact the he believes it to be the island of the day before. He teases us with him getting off the boat and possibly rescuing Lilia. That type of ending may have redeemed the languishing pages that came before it.
4. Actually pony up and write an ending. Roberto basically floats out to sea to die. Boo! Any interesting character would've made an attempt at getting to the island. Screw the coral and the rock fish (which he aggravated in the first place) and get land.
5. The concept was interesting, and enough happens that leads us to believe that Roberto believes the island to exist in the day before, but the character does nothing to reinforce or take advantage of that nor does he disprove it. To Roberto it becomes a fact that is never exploited so it's validity is irrelevant.
6. Another irrelevant point is that he's on a ship. This is arguably the biggest advertisement of the book. He's the first man to be marooned on a deserted ship. Ok, cool concept, but irrelevant because he cannot operate the ship, the ship doesn't move, the ship doesn't become disabled and require his care, etc. The ship is equivalent to a strip of land set a hew hundred yards out to sea with a bunch of stuff on it that can sustain him.
7. If this story is about someone slowly going crazy through loneliness and self recrimination the history of Roberto is irrelevant. Anyone stuck on a boat like that, given enough time, has a pretty good chance of punching out like he did. The path he chose to get there was unique but uninteresting.
8. Roberto doesn't grow at all while he's on the boat. He was a naïve bumpkin when he arrived at Casale and he was a naïve bumpkin when he was on the boat listening to the arrogant priest. He never figured anything out on his own and believed everything all the other noobs told him.
9. Ok, so the priest dies. Cool. I didn't like him anyway. But there should've been some closure. When Roberto when down under the water he should've found the body. Pulling up the coral skull, if it was some metaphor, didn't have the impact.

Anyway, this story had potential but he got lost in his "I'm smarter than you" ramblings about nonsense. The character development was thrown at the reader through the story within a story which, at least to me, is a lazy device. Basically the author gives away the responsibility of explaining the characters actions and motivations and lets the character themselves explain it which allows all sorts of nonsense to be justifiable. I never really understood the point of the story or what was solved at the end. The character just meanders along and then dies while along the way he gets caught up in some peripheral activities that really don't concern him and he does nothing to try to control any of it.


Well, those are my thoughts on the book. If anyone of the "5 star" reviewers cares to comment, please do. However, dispel the haze that surrounds this book. Add in some useful criticism or commentary that explains the book. Don't give me fan-boy comments on how I need to get a dictionary. Explain the symbolism and the subtle parts of the plot that I seem to have missed. Put your money where your mouth is;)

This book is by far the most terrible of all of Eco's productions yet. The book is flooded, no grotesquely bursting with tangents and the usual philosophical rubbish. The reminisces of Roberto's childhood are entertaining and even the time on the ship, but few, if any readers I venture, will have patience for his constant philosophical bickering over first the Meridian and then irrelevantly the meridian line. Roberto's twin Ferrante as an alternate fantasy might be amusing except that it overall detracts from a part of the book that should be reaching its climax. I do not deny that even after 400 pages of this anthole after one chapter I could want to put it down and pick up something more interesting and more thought provoking!

Marooned on a supposedly deserted ship within sight of an island photophobic nobleman Roberto della Griva must surive, and for a man to survive he must tell stories. So he writes a series of letters to his love from which this story is constructed by a 20th-century scholar some time later. Interesting as this sounds it soon gets bogged down in an ever-present sense of irony.

Don't get me wrong: I love irony as a story-telling device and use it myself in my poor attempts at fiction, but I think Eco should have kept about half the irony found in this book to himself. It is too much of a good thing, and the book drowns in it. At some point or other Eco ridicules practically every character he creates. Even those who generally hold his views do not remain unscathed, like the knight Saint-Savin, who is a secularist and humanist but who seems to believes coffee can cure pretty much anything. I can just imagine Eco snickering to himself behind his typewriter (though I'm not sure if he wrote it in longhand or on a PC in real-life - this is addressed to nitpickers). Even the final words of the book, an afterword where the author tells where he got the letters that inspired this book, have several ironic notes, which is good that it is the end, because by that time I've had enough of that. Ultimately this will alienate many readers, such as myself, though some might regard this element differently.

Otherwise this is a fascinating, haunting and formidable book, like the other books by Eco I've read. It covers a wide range of subjects, including my favourites: The Powder of Sympathy and the Longitude Pronlem. ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE is not as good as FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM or as devestating as THE NAME OF THE ROSE but it's not so boring or unreadable as some people claim it to be.

PS: If you want to read more on the Longitude Problem, there is an excellent non-fiction book by Dava Sobel on the subject, named LONGITUDE.

I wanted to like this book, but ultimately it is just too long, too confusing, and too self-indulgent to like. It revolves around a marooned man (marooned on a ship--while looking at an unreachable island) who confuses his own imaginings with reality--and confuses us a bit along with him. It seems to me that Eco took every little sophist philosophical musing he ever had and tucked it somewhere in this book. Clever wordplay, clever ideas--marooned on a ship, e.g. Christ trapped on the Island and waiting to be freed, e.g., all are thrown in as if in a blender. In the end we're left with a bloated dead body of a book. Unfortunate, if better edited and with 150 pages taken out, it might have been great.

but the second third is tediously repetitive unless you're fascinated by fifty year old Italian comics, and the last third is little more than 150 pages of cud chewing. Kind of like that guy I met in a pub the other day whose self-absorbed prattle was entertaining for the first five minutes. If you want to read a really semiotic novel check out Darkmans by the very wonderful Nicola Barker.

This is definitely the culmination of Eco's fantastic fiction career, and he's writtten some doozies. He continues to go beyond impressing to capping his reputation as one of today's best writers, if not the best. I was really amazed at this book, part Modernist (T.S.Eliot would have been proud), and part post-Modernist, he weaves a tale here that makes us all look in the mirror and think really hard about who we are & how we come to that conclusion. Thank you, Mr Eco; I think this is his best yet. Would have rated it twenty if I could have.

Once again, semiotician-novelist Umberto Eco surprises us, delights us, but mostly plays with us in "Queen Loana." It's premise is simplicity itself: Antiquarian book dealer Giambattista (Yambo) Bodoni has suffered a stroke at age 59.5 in 1991. As a result, as his doctor explains, he's lost his episodic memory--the episodes of his own life--even though he can speak and read, and he knows the identities of Napoleon, McArthur, Mussolini, etc. etc. But he doesn't recognize his own wife, and when he returns to work he has no idea if he's ever had an affair with his young assistant (she never explains).

At the urging of his doctor and his family he leaves his Milanese home to return to his family's country home, where he unearths a treasure trove of Italian popular culture from the Fascist era. This allows Prof. Eco to journey through comic books (including Italian versions of Mickey Mouse), popular fiction, magazine illustrations, newspaper articles, photomontages of Il Duce, and the like--many of which are reproduced in this handsomely designed volume.

It's part history, part fiction, part lecture on that wartime popular culture, and part a search for a lost love (alright--infatuation); and there's also a chilling wartime thriller lurking within. It ends (in a Deco daze of glorious color) with the Book of Revelation as told through the pages of Flash Gordon. And when it did, I could almost imagine the author, peering over my shoulder, seeing me smile, chuckling, "ah, you liked that, did you?"

Yes.

Notes and asides: Geoffrey Brock's translation is whatever's better than first-rate. Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) designed a typeface (a truetype version is likely loaded on your own computer). As is noted on the copyright page, however, Prof. Eco's book is set in Sabon and Interstate. Another of the author's winks and nudges?

Umberto Eco's writing is great but not easy. This will stimulate your imagination and thinking, but an easy romp it is not. If you want to stimulate your imagination and thinking this is for you. If you just want a mystery this may be too much for you. This is probably not the best book to introduce you to Umberto Eco's writing, but If you already like his other books you will like this.

Nostalgia. I'd put nostalgia foremost of the feeling this book leaves the reader with. For some reason, somehow I kind of feel that's Eco's closure at least on this literature front. As for the casual reader, I wouldn't recommend this book, unless the former is patient and willing to follow Eco's own reminiscent descent into a so-typically Italian mind-set and lifestyle surroundings. By no means this book is as introverted, as say, the Island of the Day Before, and it certainly leverages more elements from Foucault's Pendulum than any other of Eco's books. At the end of the day this book asks the reader to quite literally follow Eco to the loft of his youth and past fires and open these dusty old drawers full of brochures and posters from the '50's or the '60s. If you are willing to say 'yes' to that, then please do go ahead and pick up this book. It's a good one everything considered.

but the second third is tediously repetitive unless you're fascinated by fifty year old Italian comics, and the last third is little more than 150 pages of cud chewing. Kind of like that guy I met in a pub the other day whose self-absorbed prattle was entertaining for the first five minutes. If you want to read a really semiotic novel check out Darkmans by the very wonderful Nicola Barker.

This is definitely the culmination of Eco's fantastic fiction career, and he's writtten some doozies. He continues to go beyond impressing to capping his reputation as one of today's best writers, if not the best. I was really amazed at this book, part Modernist (T.S.Eliot would have been proud), and part post-Modernist, he weaves a tale here that makes us all look in the mirror and think really hard about who we are & how we come to that conclusion. Thank you, Mr Eco; I think this is his best yet. Would have rated it twenty if I could have.

Once again, semiotician-novelist Umberto Eco surprises us, delights us, but mostly plays with us in "Queen Loana." It's premise is simplicity itself: Antiquarian book dealer Giambattista (Yambo) Bodoni has suffered a stroke at age 59.5 in 1991. As a result, as his doctor explains, he's lost his episodic memory--the episodes of his own life--even though he can speak and read, and he knows the identities of Napoleon, McArthur, Mussolini, etc. etc. But he doesn't recognize his own wife, and when he returns to work he has no idea if he's ever had an affair with his young assistant (she never explains).

At the urging of his doctor and his family he leaves his Milanese home to return to his family's country home, where he unearths a treasure trove of Italian popular culture from the Fascist era. This allows Prof. Eco to journey through comic books (including Italian versions of Mickey Mouse), popular fiction, magazine illustrations, newspaper articles, photomontages of Il Duce, and the like--many of which are reproduced in this handsomely designed volume.

It's part history, part fiction, part lecture on that wartime popular culture, and part a search for a lost love (alright--infatuation); and there's also a chilling wartime thriller lurking within. It ends (in a Deco daze of glorious color) with the Book of Revelation as told through the pages of Flash Gordon. And when it did, I could almost imagine the author, peering over my shoulder, seeing me smile, chuckling, "ah, you liked that, did you?"

Yes.

Notes and asides: Geoffrey Brock's translation is whatever's better than first-rate. Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) designed a typeface (a truetype version is likely loaded on your own computer). As is noted on the copyright page, however, Prof. Eco's book is set in Sabon and Interstate. Another of the author's winks and nudges?

Umberto Eco's writing is great but not easy. This will stimulate your imagination and thinking, but an easy romp it is not. If you want to stimulate your imagination and thinking this is for you. If you just want a mystery this may be too much for you. This is probably not the best book to introduce you to Umberto Eco's writing, but If you already like his other books you will like this.

Nostalgia. I'd put nostalgia foremost of the feeling this book leaves the reader with. For some reason, somehow I kind of feel that's Eco's closure at least on this literature front. As for the casual reader, I wouldn't recommend this book, unless the former is patient and willing to follow Eco's own reminiscent descent into a so-typically Italian mind-set and lifestyle surroundings. By no means this book is as introverted, as say, the Island of the Day Before, and it certainly leverages more elements from Foucault's Pendulum than any other of Eco's books. At the end of the day this book asks the reader to quite literally follow Eco to the loft of his youth and past fires and open these dusty old drawers full of brochures and posters from the '50's or the '60s. If you are willing to say 'yes' to that, then please do go ahead and pick up this book. It's a good one everything considered.

If you occasionally savor pushing yourself intellectually, here's a candidate for a cool summer read way out in the deep end. Eco is popularly best known for THE NAME OF THE ROSE and THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE, and is Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna. His forte is exploration of the history of language and ideas and his biologic CPU is running at full throttle in this short collection of lectures originally delivered to the Italian Academy. The theme of SERENDIPITIES is the way in which falsity or misunderstanding has shaped our world for the better. Ptolemy, for example, was wrong about the structure of the solar system but that error fired his passion for observation which later inspired Kepler. Kircher, the founder of Egyptology, was wildly imaginative and wholly innacurate in his decipherment of hieroglyphics (including an effort to explain Chinese ideograms by fitting China into the history of the Egyptian civilization), but his scholarship provided the historical record which Champollion later unscrambled with benefit of the Rosetta Stone -- as well as fueling Europe's Chinaphilia which led, roundabout, to Leibniz getting hold of a table from the I Ching. (Leibniz inadvertently read the chart sideways, found confirmation in that mis-reading of his newly invented binary calculus, and was convinced to publish his own work. That you are reading this on a computer screen owes thanks to Kircher's inability to read King Tut's obituary.) The author notes that we each carry our own books everywhere we go, whether they are the ones we have personally read or the "books" of our culture. Every new experience is always viewed through old lenses. Some of Eco's brainstorming is too erudite and abstruse to amuse this reviewer. Chapter Two wanders around medieval Europe on Dante's heels seeking Adam's original language and the question of whether God spoke in hailstorms and wind or natural language, wonders why Augustine ignored Hebrew and Greek biblical texts in favor of Latin and sidetracks into the early Christian belief that a baby never instructed in speech would automatically speak Hebrew. Whew! Diff'rent strokes, no? (How many pins can dance on the head of an angel?) Woven throughout is a wonderful excitement about the nature of knowing; whether it be the inside joke that became Rosicrucianism, the confusion about who believed in a flat earth, unicorns and rhinosceri in Marco Polo's diary or the search for Adam's tongue which resulted in modern linguistics with its exploration of Indo-European lingual roots. Altogether, a challenging mental weight room which will leave your synapses sweaty and breathless. Plus, "Can I carry your books?" will take on a whole new meaning.

If you like Eco's nonfiction musings on semiotics, history, literature and philosophy you will love this wild ride.

The first chapter details some instances in history when false beliefs have resulted in benefits to society, provided some impetus to discovery or exploration, helped advance our understanding or correct some other misunderstanding. Examples include the Ptolemaic system, the notion of the flat Earth, the Donation of Constantine and the letter of Prester John, the Rosicrucians and the Protocols of Zion.

The second chapter addresses the ideal of a perfect language. Dante's Divine Comedy leads off. The Tower of Babel myth leads to a discussion on why Dante chose to write in vernacular. There is mention of radical Aristotelianism of the 14th century in Paris and the Modistae grammarians, including Boethius of Dacia. Then the Kabbalah, Abraham Abulafia and the Torah, the Tetragrammaton and the yod of YHWH. (Each letter represents a code for a whole name.)

The third chapter extends the idea of a perfect or constructed language and includes the idea presented in the first chapter of serendipitous misunderstandigs or misconceptions. People are said to react to meetings with new cultures in three ways, conquest, pillage or exchange. People base their interpretations on their own background books, their cultural frames.

Marco Polo in the Orient is given as an example of someone interpreting a new culture through the lens of his own. He apparently identified a rhinoceros as a unicorn, because he was firmly convinced that unicorns existed. Egyptian hieroglyphs are another example of how one culture applies its own cultural bias on a new discovery. Athanasius Kircher is cited as an example of another credulous explorer, who, although his conjectures were all false regarding the translations, provided a useful service in reproducing the originals so lovingly, that later scholars were able to discover some true meanings hidden within. Again, serendipitous misunderstanding. Francis Bacon and John Wilkins also appear in the search for a real character. Next we address the early study of the chinese ideograms and then Diego de Landa and the Maya hieroglyphs. The accident that the Maya writing were deemed early to be either heretical, diaboloical, or meaningless lead to their wholesale destruction. Yet Chinese and Egyptian were somehow deemed learned, correct or mysterious and worthy of preservation and study. The unexpected connection between Leibnitz, Boolean algebra and the I Ching was presented. Hermes Trismegistus ends the chapter.

Chapter four is a whirlwind of references; Dante, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Ramon Lull, Francis Bacon, Delgarno, Wilkins and Lodgwick, Kircher again, and particularly the Austral language of de Foigny, or rather a novel featuring a consturcted language. The arbitrary nature of assigning catagories, touching on Descartes, Leibnitz, d'Alembert, and Borges.

I would also recommend Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Eco.

Please note: This book is approximately 75% paraphrased from Eco's "The Search for the Perfect Language," which contains a more thorough treatment of the material that the two books share. The material that is new in this book is interesting, making the read worthwhile for the dedicated reader who has already enjoyed "The Search..". For the casual reader, "Serendipities" is much shorter and more accessible than "The Search for the Perfect Language", making it a suitable alternative or possibly an introduction to the longer text. However, if you take offense at paying to read the same information twice, simply do not purchase both books. Enjoy!

Do you know what Christopher Columbus was trying to prove with his historic ocean voyage, and why the church elders insisted it couldn't be done? Eco asks this question in the first essay of this book, "The Force of Falsity", and you may be surprised by the answer. Throughout, Eco gives you that delightful taste of history that he's known for, while asking provocative questions about the philosophy of language and even the nature and value of truth itself.

Language is definitely the focus of this book, but each essay is more of an examination than a thesis, and the material is not as heavy as Eco's essays about language often are. On the other hand it is not as light and playful as, for example, "Misreadings" (also a worthy read). It's a casual, engaging read with some substance to it, and well worth reading if you like to think.

I have to confess that I haven't read this book as of yet. In fact I pretty much know exactly what his essays are going to conclude with, given the fact that I've read and am well acquainted with both his academic works, as well as his novels, satire etc. and also those elements he uses in his works which require a polymathic worldview in order to even appreciate some of their subtlety (e.g. Why was William of Baskerville in "The Name of the Rose" a "nominalist" or why is the title of "Foucault Pendulum" a reference to the French Deconstuctionist Michel Foucault and not the physicist, or why is the monk at the end of "The Island of the Day Before" not an illusion at all or ..."
I'm purchasing the book "sight unseen" and given that it's Eco he's getting five stars immediately.
As for my reasons in writing this review it's pretty much revealed by my title. As for answers to to my examples; I've listed them below:

"The Name of the Rose":William of Baskerville is a nominalist because he's a member of that philosophical school best represented by William of Oakham(Occam's Razor). That school of thought, arose as a result of conflicts between certain excesses of the Scholastics. Nominalism is considered to be one of the germinal thoughts which led to the development of the "Scientific Method"

"Foucault's Pendulum": The complete subtext of this book includes the underlying theme of "conspiracy theory." The reason that's important is that Eco believes one of those things which give rise to "conspiracy theories" is "unlimited-semiosis". Eco faults Michel Foucault and his excesses such as is embodied in "deconstructionalism" as an example of one of the dangers of "unlimited semiosis."

"The Island of the Day Before." The mad monk isn't an illusion. It's actually the protaganist whose not just a buffoon, but has actually gone mad(of course he's not an illusion either). The mad monk embraces Tycho Brahe's cosmology of the solar system. Unless one understands the "history of science" in this particular historic milieu, or the reasons why Tycho Brahe came up with his cosmology(which seems truly bizarre to the modern mind) you can't discern whether the monk is real or not. Hint: The monk embraced Aristotelian Physics. Tycho Brahe's cosmology resolved the contradiction which existed between that and Galileo's observations. One must remember this was prior to Isaac Newton's "Principia" and before these issues had been resolved!

Well this was my third book by Mr. Eco and dthe continue to get worse. The Rose was excellent and made me hungry for more but after the Pendulum and this Hyper-Realty bit I'm going to have to call it quits. The author has the ability t oput together a great novel such as the Rose, I wish it were mine, but the other stuff is just not happening.

Umberto Eco is clearly a genius - his fictional works testify to that. I assume his reputation as a semiologist is well earned (since I know little about the subject beyond what Walker Percy digested).

Unfortunately, I found "Travels in Hyperreality" to be a hastily pasted collection of observations and commentary that is not really worthy of Eco's growing portfolio. The book was sometimes interesting, but dry and tasteless. I thought the whole lot of it could be encapsulated in Eco's strange observations concerning "the wearing of blue jeans." That is, if you're really, really, really into Eco and want to soak up everything he says, then this book will not disappoint. If, on the other hand, you have limited time on your hands, then Eco's fictional works, or "Search for the Perfect Language," are far better temporal investments.

Perhaps I didn't get it, or perhaps it was a mistake reading much of it in a bar in Santa Clara, but I would assert that this is only a book for the Eco purist.

A deliriously funny trip through the mad places the earth's inhabitants call home. Eco skewers like "kitsch-ka-bob" the artificial pseudo paradises we have created with all our so-called modern conveniences. What have we turned our cities into, by the way? Do we really understand art?

If you've ever driven through rural Arkansas or Texas and wanted to capture with words the seemingly inexplicable, paradoxical sights along the way, it's been done for you and can be enjoyed in these side-splitting pages.

Lots of fun.

i got this book because of the essay by which it is entitled. it is a great work, and a basic reading for those interested on the topics of hyperreality, simulated or thematized environments, and the like. quite contemporary tho Eco's work is Baudrillard's la precession des simulacres. so they are from the 70's and much more has been written on the topic, but these texts are, as i said, basic to understand all the rest. eco's work is quite openning ranging from xanaduswax museums, the theming of nature, etc. it is worthy.

Many readers will probably be attracted to books like these after reading and enjoying Eco's novels, especially The Name of the Rose and Foucalt's Pendulum. If so, be warned. As I discovered, the Eco of the essay is NOT the Eco of the novels. Both Ecos are eccentric, clever and witty. However, the Eco of essays is a more radical and postmodern thinker. His topics can be seen by some as mundane. He's interested in pop culture and some of his theories are a tad obscure.

This collection is a series of loosely connected essays by Eco. It's an interesting book to read not cover-to-cover but to read an essay once in a while until the book is finished. That way the attitudes can sink in. The biggest fault I found with the book is certain essays to do with semiotics have arguments that are complex and hard to follow. This is understandable as they're taken from more specialised publications whereas in the novels, he strives to bring his ideas to the general public.

The essays I found to be most likeable are Travels in Hyperreality (about the proliferation of wax museums in the US and the general obsession with replicas in society), Reports from the Global Village (a series of essays on media), an analysis of Casablanca and In Praise of St Thomas (Eco's PhD was on Thomas so his views can be seen as fairly authoritative).

A good read but not brilliant.

I am a long time fan of Eco's non-fiction. The pieces were not billed as being related and they certainly aren't. They should have merely lived their short lives as speeches and newspaper articles and not been bound. For the Eco collector, go to original texts, not these translations.

My wife gave me this book as a gift. I love Eco's writings, so I immediately began reading these essays. Be forewarned - if you are an Eco fan, you have probably already seen parts of this book. One of the essays was even included in last year's Belief or Nonbelief?

Wait for the paperback or check this out at the library. Unless you're giving it as a gift, Five Moral Pieces isn't worth the price.

While the book is on the pricey side, it contains some extremely relevant thought pieces for our world today.

The essays are meant to provoke further thinking on the subjects rather than provide any pat answers.

The essays on immigration and intolerance and the characteristics of fascism are particularly worth reading.

These are five essays previously written by Eco for various publications. Most of them are of interest to those who study European politics and cultural life. If you are not interested in the Italian press or post WWII Facism in Europe and are not familiar with some of the well known players, parts of these essays will make no sense to you.

However, the first essay, "Reflections on War," is worth the price. This essay was written about the first "gulf" war in Kuwait. Reading in now in a post-Iraq war frame is even more interesting. Eco predicts the neo-conservative view that active imposition of democracy by the developed nations will begin to occur in the middle east and elsewhere and he gives some brillant insight into this thinking.

The other essays have thoughts worth reading even if the topics are not your cup of tea. Like all of Eco's work, this is highly readable and not at all obtuse.

Yes, boring guy is right. If you've never been on a real vespa, or is you've only driven one on the freeway in Houston, this may be boring, but anyone who's ever taken to the road on a proper bike will love the photos alone. It chronicals a lifestyle and trying to advertise for something that everyone's already doing is easy. Indispensibly cool when trying to explain to people what you ride.

People trying to artsy about their memories of Vespa's, it's a non-electric yawn machine...pass it by.

I don't know what that other review is all about. If you own a vespa you'll love this. TONS of old ads, calendars, factory shots etc give a great overview of the vespa legend.

To judge by its premise, the respected Professor Eco wrote one of the most brilliant books. Many authors before him (George Orwell, e.g.) and including him (Eco, 'On Literature') attempted to answer the question 'how I write', but hardly anyone asked themselves 'How am I being translated into foreign languages, and what do I think about it'. Admittedly, to ask this question one needs to be able to answer it, and without Eco's knowledge of foreign languages it is impossible. If, however, like him, a reader knows at least one more language, apart from his native one, then 'Mouse or Rat?' will be an engaging, at times merely hilarious, reading. Bearing in mind Eco's long-standing research into semiotics of language, literature and philosophy, this monograph of his is at times a curious self-assessment of Eco the linguist, philosopher, writer and, in fact, translator.

This 'personal' aspect must always be remembered. In spite of drawing general conclusions, the book is often an analysis of Eco's own experience in engaging with professionals who translated his works. Eco argues - powerfully and convincingly - that translation is a negotiation between two cultures, and not merely two linguistic systems, which thesis cannot, of course, be regarded as the new word in Translation Studies. Strictly speaking, he does not attempt to formulate any new ideas, and shows great respect to Steiner's `Before the Babel'. His main goal is therefore to illustrate the application of different translation techniques (ekphrasis, rewriting, foreignising and domesticating of the source text, adapting for screen, etc.) to a variety of texts and then to analyse the results from the point of accuracy and equivalence.

As I indicated above, if a reader commands at least one foreign language, then Eco's book will be an interesting reading, not to mention the fact that the reader's awareness of the limitations and opportunities of his first and second languages may become more acute. However, bearing in mind his belonging to the so-called Joycean tradition in literature, one cannot help thinking at times, how much each of Eco's readers benefited from the author's availability for consultation and advice, as it is evident how many gems of the Master's unrivalled erudition could be lost (or, indeed, were lost).

Among the book's most inspirational and engaging passages are the analysis of Joyce's extract from 'Finnegans Wake' and its translation into French and Italian; the analysis of a poem `A Silvia' by Leopardi and its rendering into French; the exploration into the pains of a translator working on Dumas's novels, etc. The only problem the reader may encounter is the layout of the book, mainly the alteration between regular and bold fonts and italics, for purposes of highlighting various instances of translation.

Nevertheless, for an unexperienced reader 'Mouse or Rat?' will possibly be one of the best introductions to Translation and Language Studies, and even to Litetary Criticism. Despite its complexity and the monstrous abundance of examples, its basic idea is terribly simple - besides the knowledge, the key to a successful translation (and, in fact, writing) is one's sensitivity to language. This ability to 'sense' the opportunities and limitations of the source language and of the target language, so as to achieve the best possible equilibrium, makes a translator a true diplomat, a messenger between his own cultural milieu and that of the source text.

I am not a linguist, I often struggle in my own language (!), but I am interested and intrigued by language and translation. Many of my favourite writers - Murakami, Homer, Zafon, Kundera - do not write in English and I am always keen to learn more about how translators work.

Eco's collection of essays and lectures on the topic do veer towards academic at times and assume a working knowledge of a range of languages which I lack. Nonetheless they do offer an insight into the translator's craft and the problems they face.

Not recommended for a general reader but interesting further reading for those with an interest in the topic.

Este es un experimento, de ninguna manera pienso leer este libro (no quiero escribir "no", para burlar a los motores de búsqueda) pero no le doy solo una estrella para probar si la gente de este sitio lee los comentarios en español antes de publicarlo. Si logras leer esto, entonces, obviamente la respuesta es no.

Ciertamente exigente, es una lectura que exige al lector enteder un contexto en el que Eco ha estado dedicado en su carrera literaria, como noveslita y ensayista. En esta novela, sus líneas evocan el transito de una historia a través de la revisión de símbolos, iconos, mensajes en imagenes que pretenden rescatar una memoría perdida.
Sin duda, Eco es un autor exclusivo y hasta excluyente, ya que su trabajo lieterario esta dirigido a quien goza de la recreación intlectual. No me considero ser un intlectual, tal vez por eso lo defino así, porque la estructuración de sus textos, en su forma y contenido, al menos en mi, demandan una aplicación exigente de mi atención, me estimula el establecer relaciones entre los ensayos de Eco y sus novelas y conlcuyo, todas sus obras las ha ligado exepcionalmente.
Como todas sus novelas, esta no es la exepción, asume un poco de paciencia durante las primeras 25 hojas, después sabrás que no soltarás su lectura.
Es una vez más, GENIAL.

Having been a staunch Eco fan for quite some time, I stumbled across this book and its companion, "The Bomb and the General" quite by accident in a book search. Of course, I purchased both books, ostensibly for my two children, but secretly they were for me. I would give this book a higher rating if I was reviewing it solely for an adult audience.

The collage artwork is charming, and the text has the universality of a fable. However Eco never indulges in sentimentality when dealing with the serious subject matter of human intolerance and the need for a global consciousness (heavy stuff!) Children will enjoy the tale - perhaps the illustrations are not glitzy enough for today's market, but their simplicity enhances the mythic quality of the writing.

Hopefully, this book will trigger some indepth discussion between children and their carers about human nature. An excellent eco-friendly book for ALL the family!

We purchased this book for our son whose reading material is at the 4 to 8 yrs level.

This is a picture book & the story is about three astronauts (one from USA, one from China & one from Russia) who find themselves together in a situation where they learn to overlook their differences & learn to work together.

Our only disappointment with this book is the symbolic representations (illustrations) used to depict the three astronauts. Our son was expecting to see the astronauts depicted as people. The astronauts are represented by three pieces of paper - the American is a piece of chewing gum paper, the Russian & Chinese are represented by pieces of paper with Russian & Chinese script. While I can see merit in the concept, I really do think this level of comprehension is beyound that of a child.