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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/255987.Foucault_s_Pendulum?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Foucault's Pendulum" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1173197883m/255987.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/255987.Foucault_s_Pendulum?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Foucault's Pendulum</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1730.Umberto_Eco">Umberto Eco</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3974300?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 2 of 5 stars Several cultures, science, centuries of world events and conspiracy theories collide into a whacko's wet dream in Foucault's Pendulum. Three friends play at conspiracy theory, in their hyper-cynical "The Plan" game, and gradually lose themselves in it. Is their invention truer than they knew? Have they stumbled onto great truth? And the greatest question of the novel: can you keep up for five hundred pages of this? Because with a veritable bibliography of sources dropped into the dialogue and the cluttered events of the narrative, many average readers will be lost, and if you aren't interested in this sort of story, Eco's dry prose may drive you as batty as the characters. The characters can be so waifish in their design, or so helpless before the plot that they're difficult to sympathize with, and are too often treated as morose vehicles for discovery, rather than developing organically. There's also an ungodly amount going on in the background, and many readers will have a tough time appreciating the world events playing outside the windows of the main plot when they're struggling to understand all the references Eco drops that are essential to the main plot itself. It's an incredibly busy book, but a must-read for conspiracy junkies. It's certainly more intelligent than the typical Dan Brown junk, but it's nowhere near as easy to read, often forgetting it has to engage the audience at all, and so the majority of those people who enjoyed Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code while they sunbathed at the local pool won't be able to glide through this with the same pleasure.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/147818?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

John's review
rating:
recommended for: Conspiracy readers

Several cultures, science, centuries of world events and conspiracy theories collide into a whacko's wet dream in Foucault's Pendulum. Three friends play at conspiracy theory, in their hyper-cynical "The Plan" game, and gradually lose themselves in it. Is their invention truer than they knew? Have they stumbled onto great truth? And the greatest question of the novel: can you keep up for five hundred pages of this? Because with a veritable bibliography of sources dropped into the dialogue and the cluttered events of the narrative, many average readers will be lost, and if you aren't interested in this sort of story, Eco's dry prose may drive you as batty as the characters. The characters can be so waifish in their design, or so helpless before the plot that they're difficult to sympathize with, and are too often treated as morose vehicles for discovery, rather than developing organically. There's also an ungodly amount going on in the background, and many readers will ...more

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