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TommyGun85
Jun 5, 2013

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Mystery stories had been published regularly for almost a century before Christie, it's not like she was a pioneer in an unexplored genre

I understand fhat, I dont think Im explaining myself correctly.

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Ras Het
May 23, 2007

when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.
I don't read detective novels but I think stupid out of the blue twists are artistically more respectable because striving for complete realism always fails

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

TommyGun85 posted:

Its pretty unfair to criticize a book written in the 30s under todays bias. It would be like saying The Turn of the Screw isnt scary and you dont understand why people thought it was. Different times folks; the ending is only ridiculous now because it is derivative of itself.

That original title though.....yikes.

That's a ridiculous thing to say when Steinbeck, Faulkner, Tolkein, Margaret Mitchell, Orwell, Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Zora Neale Hurston, Hesse, and Woolf were publishing books in the 30s

I had to stop at 10 names because the amount of good authors publishing the 1930s, literature or genre fiction, is a ridiculously long list.

Karenina
Jul 10, 2013

just finished le malade imaginaire by molière as part of a larger scheme to keep my french from going further to poo poo than it already has. next up is frantz fanon's peau noire, masques blancs. i've already started it and am getting destroyed by some of the vocab, but that's okay, i deserve it

malade imaginaire is great, btw. i cannot stress enough how much it helps to have the book in one hand and a good stage adaptation on-screen, because half the humor is in the visual humor. like the part where argan wails that they're leaving him to die, lies down on the floor in despair, and then glances up to see if anyone's noticed.



also didn't expect molière to name-drop himself in act III, but hey, why not

my bony fealty
Oct 1, 2008

Turn of the Screw is still scary today or at least rather unsettling. the TV series they are making of it hopefully won't suck :/

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my bony fealty posted:

Turn of the Screw is still scary today or at least rather unsettling. the TV series they are making of it hopefully won't suck :/

I love they recently made it into a big budget horror movie called "the turning"

Wizchine
Sep 17, 2007

Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.
I just finished A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I had the end "spoiled" in the forward (I'm now forswearing all forwards from here on out), so it did't hit like it could have, but still a good read. I've been reading Hemingway off and on, for the past two years and enjoy his style, even with its quirks.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald. Much less than the sum of its parts, it just drifts around (like a barge?) while sad things happen at the author's cold whim. Builds fitful momentum that is invariably abandoned. Someone on Goodreads compares it to being "on a bus ride eavesdropping on multiple conversations, each interesting and incomplete", but there are clear, resolved plot lines running through it; they're just meandering and driven by arbitrary misfortunes, sometimes clearly set up, never meaningfully built toward. A laudatory quote on the cover likens it to "battles barely lost", but there's none of the urgency that the word "battles" implies, nor is there any sense that these people ever had a chance against a pen that randomly doodles in obstacles like a shoe-stealing sexual predator (?!) or prods the characters into botching the simplest things for the sake of drama. If the idea is that everyone is at the mercy of fate, the problem is that "fate" is causal, only seeming random because of individual ignorance, and the omniscient narration falls between the illusion and reality. It neither draws the reader into the characters' perspectives, to be blindsided by adversity, nor pulls away to build dramatic irony for when they meet the inevitable, and foreshadowing is either laid on thick or completely absent – the book makes a big stink about the threat of Harry at the beginning, then drops the matter for the rest of the book until he pops out again at the very end, incapable of either menace (because I haven't thought about him in at least fifty pages) or surprise (because I'd thought about him quite enough before that). It's not a bad book at all – individual scenes and sentences are too sharply written, and the overall atmosphere* is too absorbing – but it feels surprisingly lumpy and loose for something so short.

*There is a fault here. People like to point out that the book has a "liminal" setting, but while this is invariably in reference to the barges, I like the time period as well: 1962, right on the cusp of the Swinging Sixties, the fifties' illusion of stability strained to the breaking point (much like the illusion that Dreadnought's leak can be managed). Unfortunately, while it's presented recognizably at first (Elvis is frequently referenced; Billy Fury disappointingly isn't), the book's 1962 bizarrely turns into 1967 when the young Austrian aristocrat shows up for no reason near the end – it's still 1962, but people are suddenly talking about "Swinging London" and wandering through hippie enclaves. I had to check to make sure that I hadn't missed a time skip somewhere. A baffling fly in the ointment.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Apr 24, 2020

Kull the Conqueror
Apr 8, 2006

Take me to the green valley,
lay the sod o'er me,
I'm a young cowboy,
I know I've done wrong
The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles. loving excellent Western about Britt Johnson, the freedman in North Texas who ventured out into Comanche/Kiowa land to get back his captured wife and kids. It's a peer with my favorites, Lonesome Dove and The Crossing.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is like attending a formal gala and seeing someone getting loudly piss-drunk before collapsing into a champagne fountain and making a huge mess, the drunkard being the main character. In a deadly competition that most of the other competitors take quite seriously, Gideon and the third-person narration have a knack for derailing tension with crude comments, a mind wandering into horniness, or references to anachronistic internet speak. If you think that's obnoxious bullshit, this book won't change your mind, but if you want campy fun and can roll with it, the book delivers. I'm not quite as enamored with it as the SFF thread was when it first came out; I don't get the sense that the side characters have their own inner lives as one commenter said (though I'm not entirely sure how I'd discern that anyway), and there were several moments when I had trouble following along with discussions about magic or action sequences and decided to just plow through, as Gideon would. I was immediately interested to know how things would proceed in the rest of the trilogy, but I don't know if I can sustain that interest until Harrow the Ninth's release. I honestly don't know if I'd be okay with this book taking the Hugo.

empty sea
Jul 17, 2011

gonna saddle my seahorse and float out to the sunset
The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling and Mongrels: A Novel by Stephen Graham Jones.

I found all three books to be decent, non-challenging, if sometimes uncomfortable reads and since they were all horror, they were each unsettling in different ways. The ending of The Luminous Dead honestly infuriated me so much that I only skimmed the last chapter. It was a good premise and I enjoyed the first 1/2 to 1/3 of the book but I'll never loving read it again.

The Cabin really stayed with me for a few days, just that uneasy mood. Mongrels was fantastic with lots of world-building tidbits that were delivered very matter of factly. I'd love a movie or show of this book.

Mongrels and The Cabin are two I'd read again, just to see the foreshadowing bits and find pieces I missed the first time. Mongrels is definitely the best of the three and the most original and engaging. In fact, the morning I finished it I had to work and ended up only sleeping about 3 hours because I just had to finish it!

Karin73
Mar 11, 2019

.

Karin73 fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Dec 4, 2021

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

hip hop posted:

there seemed to be more insight in there than there was in my low-level economics or psychology course in college

about as much scientific validity and rigor, too; for example:


hip hop posted:

I liked the idea of ego depletion and think it may explain some things about my life.

ego depletion has repeatedly failed to replicate. it's not a real thing.

chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 02:30 on May 6, 2020

Hyrax Attack!
Jan 13, 2009

We demand to be taken seriously

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan.

Story is about Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor during the WWII era who is captured by the Japanese and forced to build a railway in hellish conditions. The narrative jumps between a day in the camp, and his life before and after the war.

Before the war he has a torrid romance with his uncle's much younger wife. While in the camp he is thrust into a leadership role and does his best to save lives. After the war he is considered a hero despite his self-destructive tendencies.

Masterfully written, especially the camp scenes and the perspective of the other prisoners and guards. Definitely a recommend.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
Forty Thousand in Gehenna, by C. J. Cherryh. Not at all typical for her; it's almost like Ursula Le Guin writing Foundation. Strong contender now for my favorite Cherryh, if only for how unique it is among her books and for the sheer quantity of ideas in it, although it could have used a hundred or so pages more (quite a rushed climax in particular) and is surprisingly badly edited.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 03:35 on May 7, 2020

BaldDwarfOnPCP
Jun 26, 2019

by Pragmatica

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Forty Thousand in Gehenna, by C. J. Cherryh. Not at all typical for her; it's almost like Ursula Le Guin writing Foundation. Strong contender now for my favorite Cherryh, if only for how unique it is among her books and for the sheer quantity of ideas in it, although it could have used a hundred or so pages more (quite a rushed climax in particular) and is surprisingly badly edited.

40K was weird and good. The way it was out of time reminded me of Canticle for Leibowitz in that you shouldn't get attached to characters.

I'm just using this as an excuse to say you contributed to and made a funny post to 372 pages we will never get back. I follow that podcast religiously and it was delightful to hear Mike or Conor read your comic book knowledge.

Sham bam bamina sort of jumped out at me

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
I think you're mixing me up with someone else. The only thing they've read from me is a piece of Shadow Moon fanfiction that didn't fool Mike, and I know jack poo poo about comics.

dthrone
Jun 6, 2019
I just finished "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomassssss Ligotti. It's a pretty comprehensive overview of antinatalism. Good poo poo, and made me want to die, but then convinced my that I don't actuallly want to die. I don't want anything. There is no I. There is no one to be, nowhere to go, nothing to see, and no one to know.
He kind of just talks about his favorite authors around the last chunk but I overall recommend it if you want to hate being alive.

TommyGun85
Jun 5, 2013
Books 1 through 4 of The Expanse.

I recently eeviewed Book 1 and have since completed Books 2, 3 and 4.

So far each book has increased in quality and have been pretty enjoyable. They are quick reads despite being fairly lengthy. The characters are thin...real thin...but my understanding is a lot of characterization is done in Book 5, which is generally regarded as the best in the series. I'm looking forward to it, but after reading more than 2000 pages if this thing; I need a beeak.

Some of the situations are hilariously absurd, but not enough that you arent able to suspebd disbelief.

I'm moving onto The City and the City next, which will be my first Mieville

Ubiquitus
Nov 20, 2011

Just finished Gideon the Ninth by tamsyn Muir.

Mixed feelings about this book - the first 30-50 pages almost had me putting the book down, it was just flat lifeless exposition without giving the reader any lasting sense of they should be invested in the world, story, or characters. That type of intro works for Stephen Eriksen, but not this writer.

The setting is interesting once the larger picture comes into view, the civilization involved is space-faring, but the plot and immediate story are driven by fantasy magic.

I'm having a hard time describing around the plot without giving anything away, but once it gets going the book is very engaging and the prose is great if you like an overlay of comedy in an otherwise serious setting. A fun read; I don't usually find myself finishing books where I bounce off the first 50 pages so hard. The middle to end of the book really carried it through for me.

Ubiquitus fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 7, 2020

BaldDwarfOnPCP
Jun 26, 2019

by Pragmatica

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I think you're mixing me up with someone else. The only thing they've read from me is a piece of Shadow Moon fanfiction that didn't fool Mike, and I know jack poo poo about comics.


Sorry my bad it just jumped out at me because you have such a unique user name

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire is a so-so book that I don't have much to say about. My most cogent thought is that it reminds me a lot of All the Birds in the Sky; they're both stories about a boy and a girl who meet each other in childhood, reconnect as adults, and have to save the world together, with the emotional core of the story being based on their relationship. Middlegame is more coherent than All the Birds and does a better job of building tension, but it's also more predictable and anodyne. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure why I had such a mellow reaction to the book, but I'm just going to move on without dwelling on it too much.

Ubiquitus posted:

Just finished Gideon the Ninth by tamsyn Muir.

Mixed feelings about this book - the first 30-50 pages almost had me putting the book down, it was just flat lifeless exposition without giving the reader any lasting sense of they should be invested in the world, story, or characters. That type of intro works for Stephen Eriksen, but not this writer.

The setting is interesting once the larger picture comes into view, the civilization involved is space-faring, but the plot and immediate story are driven by fantasy magic.

I'm having a hard time describing around the plot without giving anything away, but once it gets going the book is very engaging and the prose is great if you like an overlay of comedy in an otherwise serious setting. A fun read; I don't usually find myself finishing books where I bounce off the first 50 pages so hard. The middle to end of the book really carried it through for me.

I had this problem with Middlegame, but not Gideon.

Hyrax Attack!
Jan 13, 2009

We demand to be taken seriously

Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town by S.L. Price.

This is by a Sports Illustrated writer about a small western Pennsylvanian town that has ridiculous football success despite their size and recent troubles. Well researched, it was interesting to learn about how the steel industry was established and employed a huge amount of people and the factors that went into this declining. The sport success stories were also fascinating and I was glad the author didn't over romanticize football and covered the highs and lows, and doesn't pretend football success alone would be enough to save the town.

At nearly 400 pages felt a bit padded, and the more recent events described tend to get into small town minutiae and family relations that was a bit hard to follow. Recommended if you like football or sports stories.

Captain Hotbutt
Aug 18, 2014
I've been trying to clean out my sci-fi / fantasy backlog during quarantine. A lot of them are fairly unremarkable but it's nice to see my to-read pile get a tiny bit smaller. Will be moving on to more serious fare after this.

Crooked - Austin Grossman

Richard Nixon fights Lovecraftian horrors and loses his presidency along the way. I'd recommend it. Wraps up a bit too easily but I like the Cold War Spy Angle of it.

The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

Good-to-great. Liked it more after I had finished it and thought about it extensively. Found a way to worm into my brain and take hold. Still prefer Mother Night and Slaughterhouse Five over it, though.

Autonomous - Annalee Newitz

Just okay. Brisk read, interesting enough. Neuromancer in the bio-medical industry, if that sort of thing really gets your juices flowing.

Artemis - Andy Weir

I really liked The Martian but this was too flat and just "whatever". Very much written with the movie pitch in mind. Good popcorn read - like The Martian - but a less likeable protagonist kind of sinks it in the end.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien

I get why people love this series and there's some great artistry in there, but I was just not feeling this. The whole trilogy - to me - is just fine and I will never read it again. The Hobbit is excellent and I like it's spirit and adventure more than the endless world-building and digressions and valiant knight stuff in here.

TommyGun85
Jun 5, 2013
The City & The City by China Mieville

Very disappointing.

I can suspend my disbelief for an interesting concept; but this thing was a mess.

The core concept was that two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma occupy the same physocal space and the residents of each city are mentally conditioned to ignore anything or anyone said to exist in the other city. Not ignoring them is a crime called breaching which is enforced by a mysterious group named Breach.

The plot of the book is a murder mystery in which a woman from Ul Qoma is murdered and then dumped in Beszel setting of the administrative nighmare of which city has jurisdiction and whether or not the murder contained a breach.

The concept is interesting especially as its written very matter-of-factly, almost magical realism. I recently finiahed a much better book l, Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon which also dealt with bilocation.

The problems with this thing are that both the concept and the murder plot are so poorly executed that they are frustrating.

Mieville spends the entire book describing his core concept over and over in the most repetitive way possible. The narrorator constantly describes things he is seeing (or not seeing) and telling ypu what city they are in. Constantly. The whole novel. Furthermore, he constantly describes what breaching is. "I saw a woman, but I was in Beszel and she was in Ul Qoma so I had to unsee her or I would be in breach and Breach would get me" is a variation of a sentence that occurs on every page of the book. I'm honestly interested in a word count for 'Beszel', "Ul Qoma" and "breach".

The bigger problem is that the murder mystery is boring and has one of the worst payoffs or climaxes. The entire plot is expositioned in the final pages through monologue from the detective to the culprit at the end.

There is no depth whatsoever to the two cities and as far as I know this is the only novel he's written taking place in this world. A character at the end sums it up when he tells the protagonist, "Nobody in the world cares about your two cities or about breach, only the people who live here care". He's right. Waste of time.

Sorry for the rant. Rated it 2/5 on goodreads for at least having an interesting concept.

Dr. Pangloss
Apr 5, 2014
Ask me about metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology. I'm here to help!
The Last Angel

Sci-fi story about a massive, superpowered AI space ship created by humanity to defend against an invasion of a massive alien horde come to "civilize" humans. Some really dramatic twists and really great world building.

First time I've read a novel on a forum (found here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.244209/). Pretty enjoyable read and it's a "page" turner. I actually have a PDF version you can drop into a Kindle, it's not perfect because I'm not insane enough to go back and correct everything that went imperfectly from my copy-paste from the forums, but it's certainly readable. PM me if you're interested and I'll send you a link to it.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

Dr. Pangloss posted:

The Last Angel

Sci-fi story about a massive, superpowered AI space ship created by humanity to defend against an invasion of a massive alien horde come to "civilize" humans. Some really dramatic twists and really great world building.

First time I've read a novel on a forum (found here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.244209/). Pretty enjoyable read and it's a "page" turner. I actually have a PDF version you can drop into a Kindle, it's not perfect because I'm not insane enough to go back and correct everything that went imperfectly from my copy-paste from the forums, but it's certainly readable. PM me if you're interested and I'll send you a link to it.

There are websites for all of these webfiction sites that can automatically compile an epub from a link you provide. For spacebattles.com, try Omnibuser.

bowmore
Oct 6, 2008



Lipstick Apathy

Captain Hotbutt posted:

The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

Good-to-great. Liked it more after I had finished it and thought about it extensively. Found a way to worm into my brain and take hold. Still prefer Mother Night and Slaughterhouse Five over it, though.
I think Sirens is my second favourite after breakfast of champions

Lockback
Sep 3, 2006

All days are nights to see till I see thee; and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee.
Read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

It was good, though it took me longer to get through than usual. Some of it was the historical and philosophical musings are dense (but, it's Eco so) and part of it might be where my heads at. In the first scene the Brunellus bit made me think William was going to be the Holmesian-trope of the supernaturally intelligent ubermensch who always sees the right clue, but I was pleaseantly surprised by how much William (and definitely Adso) gently caress up or just faff about so often. It made the book FAR more exciting.

There are some long discussions on theology, lots of minutia about Catholic history and papal politics, and some descriptions of art/sculpture/dreams that are probably too verbose. But while the plot will stop for long discussions on "Did Jesus Laugh?" or "How should the Fransiscan vow of poverty be applied across Christendom?" (which has some modern echoes even 40 years after it was written) the plot is able to pick up very quickly and the story and mystery is great. In particular, the ending is extremely satisfying.

It's really very good, just know what you're getting into if you want to pick it up.

Dr. Pangloss
Apr 5, 2014
Ask me about metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology. I'm here to help!

Megazver posted:

There are websites for all of these webfiction sites that can automatically compile an epub from a link you provide. For spacebattles.com, try Omnibuser.

Thank you! I’m so glad you posted that before I started on the sequel.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
Fid's Crusade (The Chronicles of Fid Book 1) - David Reiss
Behind Distant Stars (The Chronicles of Fid Book 2) - David Reiss
Starfall (The Chronicles of Fid Book 3) - David Reiss


This is pretty much Doctor Doom fanfiction with a splash of Boys thrown in for good measure. So this one genius scientist's kid brother died because a superhero chose to let him die in a supervillain attack rather than risk his secret identity and our protagonist, Doctor Fid, took that either rather well or not well at all, depending on your opinion on how healthy it is to suit up in power armor and rob Fort Knox with an army of combat drones while giving monologues about how you are not to be hosed with. The baby brother was a sweet perfect angelic being who we get entirely too many (mercifully entirely skippable) flashbacks of and his death gave Fid a bit of a chip on his shoulder regarding superheroes who don't live up to the title and the responsibility entailed. So, by day, he's a CEO of a biotech company carefully leaking the safer, consumer-friendlier parts of the research he does in his high-tech lairs into the wider world and by night, when he's not building more superscience poo poo or committing (moderately ethical) supercrime to finance said superscience poo poo, he fucks up supers who fail to meet his standards. And, given there is three books currently out, there is plenty of opportunity.

Solid books, give them a go.


Dr. Pangloss posted:

Thank you! I’m so glad you posted that before I started on the sequel.

You're welcome! You should also join the Web Serial Megathread if you want to chat about it.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Captain Hotbutt posted:

The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

I read most of Vonnegut's stuff in high school ( a loooooooong time ago) and have wanted to revisit him, but I'm afraid of what I might think now.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
Don't be.

Lex Neville
Apr 15, 2009
I just finished Das Feld by Robert Seethaler forty seconds ago and loved it

Sandwolf
Jan 23, 2007

i'll be harpo


Mister Kingdom posted:

I read most of Vonnegut's stuff in high school ( a loooooooong time ago) and have wanted to revisit him, but I'm afraid of what I might think now.

You’ll appreciate it in new ways, honest.

euphronius
Feb 18, 2009

Can you imagine KuRt Vonnegut being alive rn with trump.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton. I did a let's read of it iffn you don't scroll to page two and wanted to know more about it

Lockback
Sep 3, 2006

All days are nights to see till I see thee; and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee.

Mister Kingdom posted:

I read most of Vonnegut's stuff in high school ( a loooooooong time ago) and have wanted to revisit him, but I'm afraid of what I might think now.

If your opinion of him dips apologize to your clearly better high school self.

Honestly, Vonnegut is one of the rare authors where you should get more layers as you get older while still appreciating the surface.

Captain Hotbutt
Aug 18, 2014

Mister Kingdom posted:

I read most of Vonnegut's stuff in high school ( a loooooooong time ago) and have wanted to revisit him, but I'm afraid of what I might think now.

Now that you're older and have more experiences, it will probably read differently and better. Worth a revisit for sure.

There's also a bittersweet feel to everything that gives you SOME hope for humanity during this accursed time.

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my bony fealty
Oct 1, 2008

Lockback posted:

Read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

It was good, though it took me longer to get through than usual. Some of it was the historical and philosophical musings are dense (but, it's Eco so) and part of it might be where my heads at. In the first scene the Brunellus bit made me think William was going to be the Holmesian-trope of the supernaturally intelligent ubermensch who always sees the right clue, but I was pleaseantly surprised by how much William (and definitely Adso) gently caress up or just faff about so often. It made the book FAR more exciting.

There are some long discussions on theology, lots of minutia about Catholic history and papal politics, and some descriptions of art/sculpture/dreams that are probably too verbose. But while the plot will stop for long discussions on "Did Jesus Laugh?" or "How should the Fransiscan vow of poverty be applied across Christendom?" (which has some modern echoes even 40 years after it was written) the plot is able to pick up very quickly and the story and mystery is great. In particular, the ending is extremely satisfying.

It's really very good, just know what you're getting into if you want to pick it up.

I think this will be my next reread, its been a few years and I've read a few more Eco books since then.

if you haven't read more of his then check out Baudolino next, he'd honed his writing style perfectly by then (or Weaver honed the translation at least) and its overall just a ton of melancholy fun.

Island of the Day Before is my sleeper favorite though, it's a bit disjointed and rough but has some really cool ideas and historical context.

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