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cover title author isbn
isbn13
asin
num pages
641
pp
avg rating 3.87
num ratings 27,126
date pub 1988
date pub edition 1989
Katharine's rating my rating review Let me start by pointing this out: if you prefer fast-moving books with a simple plot line, you do not want this book. If you want a clear-cut,unambig...more
Let me start by pointing this out: if you prefer fast-moving books with a simple plot line, you do not want this book. If you want a clear-cut,unambiguous ending, you'll particularly hate it. It will infuriate you. If, on the hand, you love puzzles, mysteries, chunks of peculiar information, and digressions, like I do, you'll love it, and I did. In some ways the book is really three books with a couple of research papers mixed in. The book's beginning takes place a few hours before its ending, but in between fall a good many years of narration. More and more these days we see literary authors appropriating genre tropes for their own work. Eco was something of a pioneer at this with THE NAME OF THE ROSE, which a canny publisher billed as a "medieval Sherlock Holmes". Despite the names of its main characters, it was nothing of the sort, of course, as many would-be readers found to their discomfort once they'd actually bought the thing. Likewise, the publishers of the original edition billed PENDULUM as an occult entertainment. Eco has something rather deeper in mind when he sets the post-WWII ideas of Existentialism, the search for what's "authentic" as opposed to non-meaning and false cultural concepts, against the rise of "New Age" ideas in the 1970s. Three men in modern Italy begin researching the history of "occultism" in Western culture for their employer, a shady publisher. They begin by scoffing at the silly "superstitions" as they call them. They want to exploit this history for a line of trashy books that will sell, nothing more, but slowly, as the narrator says, they become corrupted and converted -- perhaps. Maybe. Although the ending seems clear-cut, the more one thinks about it, the less clear it is. As a genre writer, I itched to "clean up" the ending, as I phrased it to myself, but no, Eco's right. What happens after the last page has to be ambiguous, even though the narrator thinks he knows exactly what's going to happen. If I become any less ambiguous in this review, I'll spoil things for you. A note on the female characters: two strong women and one lost female soul appear in the book. On the whole, they're well-done, real people with interests far beyond the men in their lives. One, in fact, Lia, is the only person with common sense in the whole thing. When I consider the general run of male-dominated European literature, Eco gets high marks from me for this.(less)
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date read Dec 19, 2012
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cover title author isbn 042921039
isbn13 9780439554930
asin
num pages
310
pp
avg rating 4.35
num ratings 1,793,951
date pub 1997
date pub edition Apr 11, 2003
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cover title author isbn 0345391802
isbn13 9780345391803
asin
num pages
216
pp
avg rating 4.14
num ratings 515,989
date pub 1979
date pub edition Sep 27, 1995
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cover title author isbn 0618346252
isbn13 9780618346257
asin
num pages
398
pp
avg rating 4.27
num ratings 800,611
date pub 1954
date pub edition Sep 05, 2003
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cover title author isbn 0060531045
isbn13 9780060531041
asin
num pages
432
pp
avg rating 3.94
num ratings 324,012
date pub 1967
date pub edition Jun 24, 2003
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cover title author isbn 0441788386
isbn13 9780441788385
asin
num pages
528
pp
avg rating 3.84
num ratings 140,603
date pub 1961
date pub edition Oct 01, 1991
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cover title author isbn 0553380958
isbn13 9780553380958
asin
num pages
440
pp
avg rating 3.91
num ratings 100,106
date pub May 01, 1992
date pub edition Aug 02, 2000
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cover title author isbn 0142000671
isbn13 9780142000670
asin
num pages
107
pp
avg rating 3.75
num ratings 795,365
date pub 1937
date pub edition Jan 08, 2002
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cover title author isbn 0060838582
isbn13 9780060838584
asin
num pages
399
pp
avg rating 3.69
num ratings 145,452
date pub Jan 01, 2001
date pub edition Jul 05, 2005
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cover title author isbn 0143039954
isbn13 9780143039952
asin
num pages
560
pp
avg rating 3.64
num ratings 450,158
date pub -750
date pub edition Oct 31, 2006
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cover title author isbn 0805063897
isbn13 9780805063899
asin
num pages
240
pp
avg rating 3.55
num ratings 123,981
date pub Jan 01, 2001
date pub edition May 01, 2002
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cover title author isbn 0679783261
isbn13 9780679783268
asin
num pages
279
pp
avg rating 4.23
num ratings 969,625
date pub 1813
date pub edition Oct 10, 2000
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cover title author isbn 0451529308
isbn13 9780451529305
asin
num pages
449
pp
avg rating 3.97
num ratings 729,648
date pub 1868
date pub edition Apr 06, 2004
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cover title author isbn 0142437174
isbn13 9780142437179
asin
num pages
368
pp
avg rating 3.77
num ratings 699,009
date pub 1884
date pub edition Dec 31, 2002
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cover title author isbn 0192835084
isbn13 9780192835086
asin
num pages
448
pp
avg rating 4.24
num ratings 72,665
date pub Jan 01, 1892
date pub edition Oct 22, 1998
Katharine's rating my rating review This review is mostly about the edition, not the stories, which hold up remarkably well. (I first read them back when I was a teenager. In the Dark Ag...more
This review is mostly about the edition, not the stories, which hold up remarkably well. (I first read them back when I was a teenager. In the Dark Ages, that was.) A while back Oxford University Press issued a uniform, scholarly edition of all the canonical Holmes stories, that is, all of those by Arthur Conan Doyle. They are introduced by academics who are also fans and annotated in endnotes. (I really dislike endnotes. Whatever happened to good old easily seen footnotes?) The introductions are good. Some of the endnotes are picky picky picky and not worth turning to the back for. Some are quite useful, especially for those who have only come across British money after the decimal conversion. What the series does do admirably is establish a critical text, that is, a text based on the ACD manuscripts as well as the STRAND magazine versions. (less)
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Feb 07, 2013
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cover title author isbn 0307347974
isbn13 9780307347978
asin
num pages
238
pp
avg rating 3.92
num ratings 513,114
date pub 1953
date pub edition Jan 03, 2006
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cover title author isbn 0743273567
isbn13 9780743273565
asin
num pages
180
pp
avg rating 3.79
num ratings 1,153,536
date pub 1925
date pub edition Sep 30, 2004
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cover title author isbn 0385333846
isbn13 9780385333849
asin
num pages
275
pp
avg rating 3.97
num ratings 470,381
date pub 1969
date pub edition Jan 12, 1999
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cover title author isbn 0316769177
isbn13 9780316769174
asin
num pages
277
pp
avg rating 3.76
num ratings 1,093,926
date pub 1951
date pub edition Jan 30, 2001
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cover title author isbn 0060929871
isbn13 9780060929879
asin
num pages
268
pp
avg rating 3.90
num ratings 547,778
date pub 1932
date pub edition Sep 01, 1998
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cover title author isbn 0451524934
isbn13 9780451524935
asin
num pages
328
pp
avg rating 4.06
num ratings 907,611
date pub Jan 1949
date pub edition Jul 1950
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cover title author isbn 0618260307
isbn13 9780618260300
asin
num pages
351
pp
avg rating 4.18
num ratings 1,046,600
date pub Sep 21, 1937
date pub edition Aug 15, 2002
Katharine's rating my rating review Really liked it, but should have read it when I was a child instead of a grown-up!
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cover title author isbn 0141182539
isbn13 9780141182537
asin
num pages
378
pp
avg rating 3.82
num ratings 284,559
date pub 1955
date pub edition Feb 03, 2000
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cover title author isbn 0452284244
isbn13 9780452284241
asin
num pages
112
pp
avg rating 3.75
num ratings 981,833
date pub 1945
date pub edition May 06, 2003
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cover title author isbn 0140283331
isbn13 9780140283334
asin
num pages
182
pp
avg rating 3.59
num ratings 907,720
date pub 1954
date pub edition Oct 01, 1999
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cover title author isbn 0743477111
isbn13 9780743477116
asin
num pages
283
pp
avg rating 3.72
num ratings 912,900
date pub 1595
date pub edition Jan 01, 2004
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cover title author isbn 0141439475
isbn13 9780141439471
asin
num pages
273
pp
avg rating 3.66
num ratings 465,299
date pub 1818
date pub edition May 06, 2003
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cover title author isbn 0441569595
isbn13 9780441569595
asin
num pages
271
pp
avg rating 3.78
num ratings 113,726
date pub 1984
date pub edition Jul 01, 1984
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cover title author isbn 0553803719
isbn13 9780553803716
asin
num pages
256
pp
avg rating 3.97
num ratings 145,950
date pub 1951
date pub edition Jun 01, 2004
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cover title author isbn 0060513063
isbn13 9780060513061
asin
num pages
176
pp
avg rating 4.33
num ratings 142,275
date pub Jan 01, 1981
date pub edition Oct 01, 2002
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