h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello again, Gw7en.

Interested in (not-so-)secret societies?
There I go again with book-recommendations... (Yeah, I'm a real bookworm: I can't even imagine living without books. I get seriously depressed whenever I've got nothing to read or re-read. Luckily this is relatively easy to avoid.)

Obviously there is the cult-classical "Illuminati Trilogy", but the best book about secret societies and conspiracies is without a doubt Umberto Eco's "Foucaults Pendulum". In my opinion it's his best novel, although "professional" critics everywhere seem to disagree (but what do THEY know?).

Thanks, Pat!

I once read the Illuminati Trilogy through twice in one summer. Needless-to-say, I was jumping at fnords and 23s around every corner!

Eco is one of my favorite authors - besides Gaiman, obviously. My father is an Episcopalian priest with close ties to the Franciscan order, so I was exposed to The Name of the Rose early on in life. The movie was good but the book was soooooo much better.

I know exactly how you feel about reading! I'm much the same way. I almost always have a book of some kindin my hands.

G7

Yeah, Eco is great. It's a pity I don't speak Italian, so I can read the originals, but I've read the translations of his three novels in English, in French and in Dutch, to be sure I didn't miss a thing. I thought the English translation the best (it's a really LIVING language, a huge vocabulary with a great ease to make new words by combining older ones), the French translation was MUCH too formal, and the Dutch translation simply lost too much. Strange thing for me to say, since I am a Dutch-speaking inhabitant of a bi-lingual country (French and Dutch).
And, like always, the book was LOTS better than the movie, although the movie wasn't bad (for a change). There is a lot more to "The Name Of The Rose" than just a detective-story. For the same reason I simply can NOT imagine "Sandman" being made into a movie. I believe Gaiman-fans would HATE it: all the subtleties (and inside-jokes) would be lost. (It was different for "Neverwhere": it's a simpler, more straightforward story, AND it was a series, so there was a lot more time to tell the story.)

But this hasn't got a lot to do with secret societies anymore, so I just wanted to say that if the "Illuminati" made you paranoid, wait until you've read "Foucault's Pendulum", there's no 23's or such (there IS of course numerology), but it's written by someone you KNOW has based his writings on historical research and evidence...