You Should Read: Eco

If you think it odd that an obscure Italian professor of Medieval Philosophy could turn out to be a best-selling author of mystery novels, then you will be pleasantly surprised to discover Dr. Umberto Eco.

By turns a semiotician (expert on the history of mysterious signs and symbols), essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, Eco is perhaps best known for his wonderful 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose); an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory.

Made into a 1986 blockbuster movie, starring Sean Connery, F. Murray Abrahan, and Christian Slater, and set in Italy in the Middle Ages, The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation in a monastery in 1327, but also a chronicle of the 14th century religious wars, a history of monastic orders, and a compendium of heretical movements.

A good place to start with Eco is his riveting Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum); a multilayered semiotic adventure, with more plot twists and turns than anything dreamed up by Agatha Christie. Three Milanese editors cook up a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. They develop a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum.

But the hoax takes on a life of its own, and sundry competing groups vie with one another in their quest to gain control of the earth.

Eco has also written academic texts, children's books and many essays. He teaches at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici (Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities), University of Bologna, and is an Honorary Fellow at University of Oxford.

You can pick up a copy of The Name Of The Rose, for about 3 bucks, HERE.

You can pick up a copy of Foucault's Pendulum, for about 4 bucks, HERE.

And, for about 12 bucks, you can get a copy of Eco’s latest mystery novel, The Prague Cemetery, HERE.

If you’re really interested in learning about Semiotics, you can get a hardcover edition of Prof. Eco’s Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, for about $165.00, HERE.

Finally, Prof. Eco has his own web page (in English) HERE.

“You Should Read” is a weekly iLocal News series, reviewing not only the latest books by local writers, but also reminding readers that some of the best books in print have been around for a long time. As Mark Twain said, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

Books are wonderful things. Whether you are lying on the beach, or curled up in your favorite chair in front of a fire on a frosty day, a good book to read will fill your day with enjoyment. It doesn’t matter if your book is a leather-bound treasure, an inexpensive paperback, an electronic Ebook or Kindle, or an audiobook playing on your car radio. Books excite, inform, move the soul, and stimulate the senses. Reading expands your world, and makes you a more interesting person.

As Groucho Marx once said, “Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”