Traveller’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2013)

Traveller’s comments from the Foucault's Pendulum group.

Nice comments, Dolors. :)
I've opened the next section which goes up to chapter 72, so that you can post your further comments, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

We start out with Shakespeare's observation that "The prince of darkness is a gentleman. " :)

I really enjoyed the story about the two war veterans, btw. :)

Yes, KFC and Mc Donalds haven't moved completely to the internet yet, in the sense that you can still drive there and buy directly from them, so their drive-in outlets will probably be around quite a while longer than some general chain stores, for which Amazon's got most of that market already... ;)

Jan-Maat wrote: "Well Manutius is a scam operation isn't it? It gives people what they want or think they want but at a cost. Likewise Aglie and his operation. The funny thing is that the Manutius group start ou..."

Yip at least Amazon really sells to customers, which is more than what one could say of Manutius. :P

The Woolworths study is too funny. The next thing I would like to see studied, is the patterns formed and conclusions to be made from the locations of the various Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets over the world. Or Mc Donalds...

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: ""The Assassins" are the Hashshashins, Ismailis and the followers (at the time of most of the events described in the book) of Rashid ad-Din Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain. He (and they) were significant players during the Crusades, and would be well known to the Templars..."

I've just shown my son what I've posted above, and the link you posted to The Old Man of the Mountain, and he exclaimed: "Yes, I've been there!" and at a puzzled look by me, "In the game, of course".

My son, it appears, is steeped in the history around this because of the game! Now I'd be very interested to know how accurately the game portrays history.

Obviously there are fantasy element intertwined in it, but I'd be interested to know how historically accurate their background is, especially as they incorporate things like the Renaissance, and Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, etc, and even in the later games, the American revolution.

Jan-Maat wrote: "I like the parallel between the initiation / preparation to scalp the punter by the charlatan we see in chapter 38 and that we see in chapters 46/47."

Ha, you mean that the tables are somewhat turned?

I'd actually posted a post regarding some of the discussion they have there, a while ago, which GR promptly swallowed as soon as I posted it; so I'm still trying to recover from the nerdrage re that.

In any case, it was something to this effect:

Take the height of the pyramidion, multiply it by the height of the whole pyramid, multiply the total by ten to the fifth, and we obtain the circumference of the earth. What's more, if you multiply the perimeter of the base by twenty-four to the third divided by two, you get the earth's radius. Further, the area of the base of the pyramid multiplied by ninety-six times ten to the eighth gives us one hundred and ninety-six million eight hundred and ten thousand square miles, which is the surface area of the earth.

Heh heh, I'm sure that if you took the height of the pyramidion and multiplied it by certain numbers and divided it by other numbers, then you'd get the depth of the sea in various places, the distance between Stonehenge and Easter Island, and/or between Stonehenge and the moon, or the moon and Jupiter, the sun and Mars, the Bermuda triangle and the Orion constellation, or the diameter of the base of one of the pyramids in South America.

I'm sure people who enjoy doing arithmetic calculations could have lots of fun working back from various distances and diameters and circumferences to get back to the height of the pyramidion.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Who the heck are The Assassins even?"

Sorry, I meant to respond to this at the time. I'm only about a month and a half late.

"The Assassins" are the Hashshashins, Ismailis and t..."

Now that is an interesting bit of information! As soon as I have my son at hand, I'll try and figure out with him if they had anything to do with th inspiration for the game Assassin's Creed. Hmm, a quick glance at Wikipedia confirms it:

"Assassin's Creed is a historical action-adventure open world stealth video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal released in 2007 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and 2008 for Microsoft Windows. The game primarily takes place during the Third Crusade in the Holy Land in 1191, with the plot revolving around the Secret Order of Assassins, based upon the Hashshashin sect. The player is in reality playing as a modern-day man named Desmond Miles, who through the use of a machine named the "Animus", is allowed the viewing and controlling of the protagonist's genetic memories of his ancestors, in this case, Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad, a member of the Assassins.

Through this plot device, details emerge of a struggle between two factions, the Knights Templar and the Assassins, over an artifact known as a "Piece of Eden", an ancient artifact used to control minds. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin...




This is very, very interesting! These games are my son's favorite of all time, he's nuts about them. I tried to play them myself, actually, but the stealth and the controls frustrated me too much.







At various times in the series, (the series progresses through time) Leonardo Da Vinci and the Borgias also feature in the plot. :)

Oh golly, I just have to post all the humorous bits:

" Also, besides the manuscripts, I have letters that offer revelations on the connections between Joan of Arc and the Sibylline Books, between Lilith the Talmudic demon and the hermaphroditic Great Mother, between the genetic code and the Martian alphabet, between the secret intelligence of plants, cosmology, psychoanalysis, and Marx and Nietzsche in the perspective of a new angelology, between the Golden Number and the Grand Canyon, Kant and occultism, the Eleusian mysteries and jazz, Cagliostro and atomic energy, homosexuality and gnosis, the golem and the class struggle.

Heh heh heh heh. He forgot the Hollow Earth and Bigfoot and the crop circles, which are connected with the Bible, UFO's and the Bermuda Triangle, and not necessarily in that order.

Btw! I though I'd mention that I've started a separate 'plot' thread, to make it easier for us to track the threads of the various plotlines, but in particular the main plotline concerning Casaubon, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

You guys are welcome to help out and add or point out omissions.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I'm cheating a bit because I'm just getting to that point, but I'll point out that her shame actually begins before the ceremony when she says to Aglié "I forgot my own country and my own race…"..."

Good catch, Derek. I guess the experiences at the various rituals gave her a lot of food for soul-searching.

Ha ha, this man is priceless:

" I'd love to have your homunculus, and then we could keep it like a dachshund. It's easy, the book says: you just have to collect a little human seed in a test tube. That wouldn't be hard for you—don't blush, silly. Then you mix it with hippomene, which is some liquid that is excreted—no, not excreted—what's the word?"
"Secreted," Diotallevi suggested.
"Really? Anyway, pregnant mares make it. I realize that's a bit harder to get. If I were a pregnant mare, I wouldn't like people coming to collect my hippomene, especially strangers, but I think you can buy it in packages, like joss sticks. "

Jan-Maat wrote: "I don't know what Causaubon could have done really, you can't force someone to want to be with you."

He could perhaps have tried to re-assure her that a similar thing could have happened to anyone under the circumstances, but maybe he wasn't convinced enough of that himself... *shrug*

Dolors wrote: "The influences of symbols and signs in language and literature amazes me because I had never given it a second thought - not until reading FP- and it seems it has had a significant impact in the history of thought."

Oh, yes, it has quite a significance especially if you're primed to look out for it. It's something I find very interesting, and something that keeps revealing itself the more you look for it. That's why I love discussing books so much, because other people often see things that I hadn't spotted myself. :)

Thanks for the links!

Ah, will you wait for me with Sylvia Plath, Dolors, please? It's been top of my TBR for more than a year. Perhaps some of the Five will be interested in it too. (...but later in the year, I hope)

Like I mentioned to Ema and Declan, I'd love to read brothers Karamazov with you guys, but I don't think I'll be able to fit it into early January what with Snow Crash and other commitments.

Actually, Dostoevsky would be perfect for this group. Crime and Punishment , perhaps.

Cool, then since we have two votes for a Murakami, that's one that will definitely go to the poll. Now we need to wait for a few more. I've not broadcast this thread yet, since I'm a bit nervous of heaping too much onto my own plate at once.

But I'll do it in the next day or so. :)

The next thing we'll have to decide on, is when to do it. My schedule is full until later in February.

And while I think of it, let's make a link to Dance Dance Dance

Personally, I'd like an excuse to finish The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

They're just suggestions, Ruth, you're welcome to make your own. Once we have about 4 or 5 that have been seconded, we can put them to the poll. But no hurry, since there's still lots going on at Mievillians as well.

EDIT: Oops, edited out some typo's.

Dolors wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Hmm, so exactly what happened in Brazil with Casaubon after Amparo's er... mystic experience? I had initially thought he'd actually liked that she was, you know, Brazilian deep d..."

Yeah, I agree about Amparo. She had always spoken about her culture with derision, and here it turns out that she's a part of it whether she wants to be or not.

But rather, Casaubon's reaction is the one that puzzled me. I'd been wondering if he perhaps was waiting for her to get over it and make contact again, and after floating around for about a year, he realized it wasn't going to happen, so he gave up waiting and floated back to Italy again.

Dolors wrote: "What most struck me about this part is this need to find meaning in symbols and signs, to find meaning everywhere. Even words are presented as nothing more than physical marks on a piece of paper. The importance of signs is their ability to convey meaning and meaning is ultimately located in the mind of the individual rather than in the signs themselves."

Wonderful to see you posting here, Dolors, welcome back!

You seem to have Eco himself down to a 'T' there, as well as the definition of semiotics. (The study of signs, symbols and how humans process 'meaning'.) As we had said in our background thread, Eco's studies started off in Medieval aesthetics, through which I think at some point he started becoming fascinated with heresies and heretics and focused on societies like the Templars - one sees a similar focus on heretics in his first novel, The Name of the Rose. ..and then later in his life, his focus moved to semiotics, so much so, that he is more well-known as a semiotician than for his work in aesthetic theory.

Hello members!
There have been members of this group who mentioned they would like us to try out some other books, more books by Umberto Eco and some by other authors as well.

I was thinking to use this thread as a nomination thread in this regard. My schedule is pretty full this year already, (we have a sister group that is focused on speculative fiction https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/... ) so I personally won't be able to handle more than one read per 6 weeks.

I'd like to read something not by Eco next, for a bit for variety.
I want to ask that we stick with what can more or less be described as literary fiction, and, in the spirit of the original book we started with, it would be nice if we included books written by non-English authors that have been translated into English.

In that spirit, I'd like to start off the nominations with a few suggestions:

1) Blindness by Jose Saramago

2) The Path to the Spiders' Nests by Italho Calvino, or other suggestions of works by Italho Calvino : Invisible Cities or If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
or Cosmicomics

3) Anything by Haruki Murakami :)


So, you guys are free to either second any suggestions, or make your own suggestions.