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

Hello Sho!

Is this current or out of date, in your Introduction: "I'm currently reading: The Two Towers by Tolkien, along with Baudolino by Umberto Eco (which I'm about to give up on, unfinished. A thing hitherto unheard of)."

?

I've just finished reading Eco's "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" and I can't recomend it highly enough. Extraordinarily readable, with none of his arcane brain twisters. Plenty of name dropping as usual, but it's all to the point. I found it both subtle and simple, both ambitious and modest, in equal parts brilliant and moving. There! That's praise.

Ah; out of date as I see from F19585?thread=116314&post=9012926#p9012926

not out of date as it happens... I still have Baudolino on my bedside table, and I am about halfway through TTT.

However, I have no energy for the Eco, and since I am on a bit of a Harry Potter fest, Tolkien will have to wait. He knows I will always come back to him in the end though!

btw: oh and nice to see you again

I recently had a convo with which lead him to mention that my middle name is Pretentious. it went like this

Him: so, what are you reading right now
me: oh, that Eco thing. I've come to the conclusion that I prefer Rushdie to Eco.
him: pretentious git

ho hum

I think I may read The Island of the Day Before, and see if that still holds true.

The Island of the Day Before is more pretensious and, as I remember it, quite annoying; in the end I found it disappointingly insubstantial. Full of interesting stuff by the way, which I suppose was what he was interested in.

The Mysterious Flame has the hallmarks of a Proustian search for a fictionalised identity. He keeps it infinitely lighter than Proust, which I call a big achievement.

I think I'm missing the point when I read Eco. I loved The Name of the Rose, but Focault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before and Baudolino have all defeated me. I honestly don't know why I keep trying.

Proust I have never tried - and I don't think I ever will.

Yes. Proust is a handful. And yet . . . one can easily become a Proustian. True, he falsified his life in the telling, making his boyfriends appear as girlfriends (with names like Gilberte and Albertine -- I ask you).

But he makes some powerful points: for instance that in his book all the characters are fictitious, *including* both the writer and the reader. He also puts his characters through the hoops, so that they all without exception turn out at the end the reverse (in one way or other) of how they started.

for now.... I'm sticking to Harry Potter.