This book is so self-aware, I feel like it's reading over my shoulder right now. I recall, about half-way through, lamenting the fact that my edition contained no footnotes for translating the frequent Latin, Italian, and Greek texts thrown into this narrative. And now, after reaching Eco's last line (in Latin!) I hear him laughing at me. Don't you get it, reader?! Roger Bacon chides the scholar who doesn't make languages his first priority, and as I can only piece together a few Latin words and stretch meaning from the context, I come to my own conclusions based on what I have read and learned in the past, as William solves his case the wrong way, but with the right answers. I don't read Latin as Adso doesn't read Greek, as William doesn't read Arabic, as mortal man can never read God's language, and so we make our own assumptions based on what we do know. The world's knowledge is constantly fragmented, and we keep what we can use, we forget or reinvent. One day the library will burn, the database will fail, and the only books that will matter are the ones we've read. And who can read what books? Here I begin my

Ode to the Joys of Reading Two Books Simultaneously

I picked up this book Reading With Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, not because I am necessarily interested in the particular books that comprise Oprah's list, but because the phenomenon, as a bookseller, intrigues me. My own attitude as book snob was outed when Cormac McCarthy joined her ranks, and I felt the mass public didn't deserve his offering. You have to earn an appreciation for McCarthy. What the hell do I mean by that? Here, watch me struggle with my conscience: If you tell me your favorite author is Picoult, my recommendation will never be McCarthy, even though I feel he'll always be a more satisfying read. But you're not ready. You don't want to reorganize the furniture in your head, you just want a touch of color on your sofa. And that's ok. Moving furniture is a lot of hard work, and I like an easy read between moves. But my favorite reason to read is to change; that's not everyone's reason. What does this have to do with Name of the Rose, you ask?! Because there was this monk, 600 years ago, running Oprah's book club, and he didn't want McCarthy, I mean, Aristotle, distributed to the masses, because they weren't going to read it right, even if it is in Greek. The book had the ability to cause change. This monk, this librarian, didn't want to cause change, to innovate, he wanted to preserve, to archive. Oprah says she wants change, but by promoting her book list, she's preserving at the same time, labeling titles to the Oprah cult, garnering huge sales for her authors. And now she's quit. What may have been future Oprah picks are hidden in the finis Africae, left only for the chosen to find. My point? I dunno. But Eco tells us that all books are references to other books, and now Earth Abidesspeaks to me about the end of reading, preserving, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope speaks to me about the salvation of reading, innovation, and every damn thing I read reminds me why I read and why the book I haven't read yet is going to make the book I just read even better. I'm filling in the context with my own collection of fragments, and the story is told and told again, and when I'm ready I'm going to move the sofa.