May Group Read - The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco)

Welcome to the May group read, where we'll be diving into the murder mystery of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.



The Wikipedia synopsis is as follows:
The Name of the Rose (Italian: Il nome della rosa is the 1980 debut novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery, in the year 1327, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. It was translated into English by William Weaver in 1983.

For those interested in Eco himself encyclopedia.com has this short biography on him:

Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932, in Alessandria, Italy, to Guilo and Givovanna Eco. He attended the University of Turin, where he studied medieval philosophy and aesthetics. He published his doctoral thesis, Il Problema estetic in Tommaso d’Aquino (The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas) in 1956. In that same year, he began his academic career as a lecturer at the University of Turin. Eco’s familiarity with and attraction to popular culture was manifested early; he began writing a monthly column called “Diario minimo” in 1959, and has continued to comment actively on current affairs and culture since that time. Eco has continued to teach at a variety of worldwide universities, and he served as the chair of the semiotics department at the University of Bologna in Italy for many years. Beginning in 1999, he served as the President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici at the University of Bologna.

For most of Eco’s early career, he was well known as an academic writer and teacher of semiotics and philosophy. Most scholars considered his work to be brilliant. However, in 1980, the publication of Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) in Italy, followed by the 1983 publication of the English translation, shifted Eco from the relative obscurity of a well-published academic to the public limelight as a literary super star with a bestselling novel. In 1984, Eco published an English translation of an essay on the composition of The Name of the Rose called “Postscript to The Name of the Rose.” This essay is included in the Harcourt 1994 edition of the novel.

Eco has won many awards for his fiction, including the Prix Medicis Etranger, 1982, for The Name of the Rose; France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1985; the Marshal McLuhan Award from UNESCO Canada and Teleglobe, 1985; the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, France, 1993; Golden Cross of the Dodecannese, Greece, 1995; and the Cavaliere di Gran Croce al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, 1996.

Eco followed the successful The Name of the Rose with several more novels, all translated into English by William Weaver. These include Foucault’s Pendulum (1989); The Island of the Day Before (1995); and Baudolino (2002). In addition, Eco has produced an astounding number of books in Italian, as well as English, on a variety of philosophical topics, as well as countless interviews, articles, and essays.

The BBC 3 program Free Thinking did an interview with Eco that is available for listening here.
The BBC World Service's World Book Club featured Eco and The Name of the Rose in 2007 and you can listen to it here.

In 1986 The Name of the Rose was made into a very successful film starring Sean Connery.
It has also been made into a board game, which seems to have a pretty good rating.

First of May, first day of the Eco group read!

I hope everyone who wants to join has a copy ready and if not - get on it! ;)

Got my copy down and found a copy of The Key to The Name of the Rose from the library, so I'm all set.

>5 amanda4242: Great! I have a few links to similar online things. I might post them later if I remember.

I started reading last night and I'm really enjoying it so far. I've been having fun playing spot the allusions: there's the expected biblical ones, but also Jorge Luis Borges's "Library of Babel" and Sherlock Holmes--the description of William of Baskerville (super obvious reference) could have come straight out of A Study in Scarlet, even the narcotics use is there.

I've received my copy via ILL, and have started it. So far so good!

We're halfway through the month now, so how are things going? I'll admit it's not going well for me. I've been a bit busy and not had as much time as I'd like to read so I'm still on the first chapter. But I'm liking it so far so I hope I'll get more time during the second half of May and be able to finish on time.

I'm lacking reading time, too, plus reading other things. I wish I had it on audio, as I have more listening time than actual reading time lately. I'm into the "Second Day" of the narrative, and rather enjoying it.

I saw a mention of a reading guide for it up thread, I think? Probably a good idea, as I can tell there are levels to this story that I'm missing.

The storyline is too demanding for me to be able to listen to it on audio. For audiobooks I need simples storylines or books I've already read once. I get easily distracted by other things when I listen to audiobooks so I need something where it doesn't matter so much that my focus was elsewhere for a few seconds.

The Name Of The Rose is on daily deal at audible in the UK today, perhaps elsewhere too

I'm going to have to give this one up for now. I haven't made it more than a chapter and there's no way I'll be able to finish in time. I have other books I'm really excited to read so I'd rather but this one aside and focus on those than trudge on with this one. It seems good but I'm just not in the right mood for it now. May has also been pretty busy for me so that didn't help either.

Hope anyone else who's been reading has had a good time with it.
I'll set up a thread for the June and summer reads as soon as I can.

I'm going to finish it, but probably not in May. I hope it's ok to continue posting here in June, as those of us who are going slowly finally finish up.

Of course! Finish it at your own pace! I'll be reading what you write.

>13 PawsforThought: I know what you mean about wanting to get to other books. This one seems to be going very slowly for me. I always also have more than one book going at a time -- an audio, an e-book on my phone for portability, and a non-fiction, in addition to my novel -- but other books are calling to me from the shelves.

>16 tymfos: Yeah, I'm pretty much always reading multiple books at once, but I've been trying to focus more on just one or two lately - I tend to spread myself a bit too thin sometimes.

I guess I'm in the minority here: I had to slow myself down while reading and still finished in a week. It could certainly be dense and challenging in places, but I found it a very rewarding read.

This book is so big, it's not easy to take anywhere and since it was an ILL I was reluctant to take it places anyway. I've not had much home reading time lately except late at night, when I've been a little too tired to concentrate well, and thus tended to pick up lighter fare.

>18 amanda4242: Wow! That's seriously impressive.

I've been pretty busy at work so have had to skip my usual afternoon break (which I normally use for reading), and have several projects going on at home (including helping my parents re-paint the house), so there simply hasn't been much time left. I've been pretty exhausted at night so usually just listened to a short podcast. When I did try reading this at night, I'd just fall asleep after a few pages, and then would have to re-read most of it the next time I read.
I think I would have needed a fairly long sitting to really get into this book initially. As it is, I never really got there.

OK, this is what I posted in my thread about The Name of the Rose:

Brother William and his trusty aide, novice Adso (the narrator) arrive at an abbey where there has been a mysterious death. More deaths follow. William is there to deal with matters of faith, heresy, and politics, with an arriving Papal delegation; but he and Adso are drawn into the role of detectives.

I read this for the May group read. It's very clever, and certainly well researched for historical detail, but I found it rather tedious. Church history and theology are interests of mine, and both were factors in this book set in a 14th-century abbey in the midst of heresy investigations. But there was more detail than I could process under my current reading opportunities. It was a slow read for me, and I found myself just wanting it to be done so that I could move on to other things.

I didn't give it a star rating -- I recognize the quality of the book, but it just wasn't the right read for me at this time.

>21 tymfos: I have to say I agree with you.

Here's what I posted on my thread:

Wow! That was a real slog of a book. I listened to the audiobook which is 21 hours long, although that's probably quicker than I could have read it myself (I'm a slow reader, and I'd have given more thought to the latin if it were printed in front of me).

The story is entertaining enough, but it is very long winded in the telling. One reads it more for the rich symbolism and religious language from 14th Century Catholicism. At the same time the philosophy behind the book is very clearly postmodernist, which places it firmly in the latter part of the 20th Century; this makes a curious mix.

I am glad I persevered however it is not something I intend to reread and I will probably steer clear of the authors other works too.

>18 amanda4242: We must be in the same minority group. The Name of the Rose is one of my favourite books, and for me it was one I could not put down.

I read the book before the film was made. When I heard the film was to be released I was delighted but when I heard Sean Connery was playing Brother William my enthusiasm for the screen adaptation diluted. I pictured James Bond in a habit.

As it transpired, Connery was brilliant in the role and it was the first film I have seen that actually kept to the book it was based on. I detected only one variation from the novel and that was at the very end and it didn't make that much difference to the story.