I just got done reading (listening to) “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, by Umberto Eco.

Oy.

I enjoyed “The Island of the Day Before”, and “Baudolino” was fairly interesting. I even kind of enjoyed “The Name of the Rose”. But “Faucult’s Pendulum” was incoherent babbling, and “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana” can be called nothing other than the ravings of a madman. How people can call it good writing is beyond me. But, I valiantly soldiered on through it, and finished it. The last chapter, in particular, is very trying. The first half of the book is Eco showing off all the great stuff he has ever read. The second half is more of that, but with a little bit of an interesting war-time story mixed in. But this eventually becomes less and less coherent until it is simply an increasingly insane dream sequence.

In case you wondered, I don’t recommend this.