A good casual reflection of Eco's genius and sense of humor, How to Travel is an oddball mix of short essays and fiction. Most pieces follow the "how-to" title format, with satiric content. Of note are the title essay, "How to Justify a Private Library," "How to Write an Introduction," "How to Watch out for Widows," and "How to Organize a Public Library." These have a rather matte sheen of cultural commentary on travel, life as an intellectual (I know, but Eco breaks the shiny celebrity life into rather hilarious pieces) and even issues like cultural representation and pacing in movies. Their reassuring rhythm stays fresh in this way: they always begin on-topic, precisely, but then take a very specific turn, and follow whatever conceit has been chosen to an appropriate closing point. Though most columnists induce involuntary urges in me to hit my head against the nearest wall, I'd gladly subscribe to a magazine that featured this kind of thing, if I could read Italian and Eco were in any state to be writing.
The pieces which don't fit into this pattern provide nice change of pace and are completely unexpected. "Stars and Stripes" gets a little distracted by its own details, but is a brilliant little sci-fi sidetrack. "On the Impossibility of Drawing a map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1" shows the extent of imagination which makes Eco successful in so many other ventures. "Editorial Revision" is clever and delightful, but I won't pretend to follow all of it; along with "Sequels" and a few of the other literary pieces it was a demonstration of the depth of Eco's reading but not all accessible for those who haven't a complete knowledge of the classics.
The closing essay is tender, kind, and loyal, all without giving up the honesty of telling about one's hometown or the historic rigor characteristic to Eco's writing, and gives the perfect bittersweet closing to a book unified only by the author's perspective. ( )

Cómo viajar con un salmón es un manual de instrucciones sui géneris a cargo de un maestro excepcional: Umberto Eco. Cómo sobrevivir a la burocracia, evitar enfermedades contagiosas, no usar el teléfono móvil, salir en la televisión aunque no seamos nadie, no hablar de fútbol, comer un helado o evitar caer en los complots son algunas de las muchas situaciones de nuestro día a día en las que el autor nos guía con su característico sentido del humor. Preparada por él mismo, esta selección de artículos, que incluye los que se publicaron en Segundo diario mínimo y otros inéditos y se ha convertido en Italia en un fenómeno de ventas, nos anima a tomar conciencia de que la vida sucede en las pequeñas cosas, los encuentros azarosos y los problemas menores, y no en los dilemas dialécticos o los grandes interrogantes sobre la existencia que ocupan una ínfi ma porción de nuestro tiempo.

It reads like a collection of essays by a hybrid of Jorge Luis Borges and Dave Barry. (I mean that as a compliment because I admire both of those writers.)

In “How to Speak of Animals,” reflecting on a news item about two kids who break into the Central Park Zoo after-hours, go swimming in the polar bear enclosure and end up getting chewed to bits, he gives his theory on the root cause:

These children were probably victims of our guilty conscience, as reflected in the schools and the mass media.

"Human beings have always been merciless with animals, but when humans became aware of their own cruelty, they began, if not to love animals (because, with only sporadic hesitation, they continue eating them), at least to speak well of them. As the media, the schools, public institutions in general, have to explain away so many acts performed against humans by humans, it seems finally a good idea, psychologically and ethically, to insist on the goodness of animals. We allow children of the Third World to die, but we urge children of the First to respect not only butterflies and bunny rabbits but also whales, crocodiles, snakes.

Mind you, this educational approach is per se correct. What is excessive is the persuasive technique chosen: to render animals worthy of rescue they are humanized, toyified. No one says they are entitled to survival even if, as a rule, they are savage and carnivorous. No, they are made respectable by becoming cuddly, comic, good-natured, benevolent, wise, and prudent.

…

Advertising, cartoons, illustrated books are full of bears with hearts of gold, law-abiding, cozy, and protective—although in fact it’s insulting for a bear to be told he has a right to live because he’s only a dumb and inoffensive brute. So I suspect that the poor children in Central Park died not through lack of education but through too much of it. They are victims of our unhappy conscience.

To make them forget how bad human beings are, we were taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are."

And some unassailable logic in “How to Avoid Contagious Diseases”:

"I read recently that according to the revelations of Professor Matré, heterosexual contact is carcinogenic. High time somebody came out and said it. I would go even farther: heterosexual contact causes death, period. Even a fool knows that it ends in procreation, and the more people are born, the more die." ( )

"How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays" is a 'How-To' book by Umberto Eco, with which he aims to help readers get through our modern lives. You may be one of those who needs to know "How to Recognize a Porn Movie" or "How to Eat Ice Cream" or "How to Use the Coffeepot from Hell." Or not. But if you izz or if you izzent, you'll probably have a good laugh at the modern CORRECT way of doing any one of the 41 things that other people don't know how to do correctly. Bring lots of clean underpants and a few rolls of toilet paper, and keep them handy while you enjoy Umberto Eco's latest laugh at the modern world.

Four-and-a-half stars because neither author Eco nor his translator, William Weaver, thought to tell me how much paper I would need.

Solomon sed ( )

Un manuale di istruzioni per vivere ai tempi di facebook, degli assolutamente, dell’ignoranza imperante che ai tempi degli enne punto zero si accompagna all’arroganza. In buona parte racconti tratti dalla rubrica che Eco teneva sull’Espresso, la bustina, degli elzeviri brevi ma sempre pungenti e divertenti. Un intellettuale colto ed attento come Eco non poteva accettare la deriva del bit e così scrive una sorta di manuale di sopravvivenza nel quale la sua cultura e conoscenza vengono ben evidenziati; non sono i libri di Burioni, che devono affrontare temi scientifici, dove la posizione dei contro rischia di pregiudicare la salute delle persone con gravi ripercussioni; Eco parla del quotidiano, del tassista, dell’uso dei telefonini, dei pc, dei viaggi in treno, delle banalità che infestano la nostra vita. Breve e gradevolissimo; con evidenti richiami alla prevalenza del cretino di Fruttero e Lucentini. ( )