I read this at Burning Man. Weirdness to the max!

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What a magnificently weird book.

Told almost entirely in extended flashbacks, the plot, although I hesitate to call it that, involves three men who work for a small Milanese publishing house specializing in obscure, conspiracy-themed books. As the book progresses, mostly in long expository speeches on various conspiracies involving the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and eventually the Jesuits, the three main characters start using an early IBM PC (the setting for the start of the story is around 1980) to create random conspiracy theories by feeding it random bits of data.

This leads to them formulating The Plan, an attempt at reconciling all the contradictory claims and histories into a sinister, coherent whole. What starts as a fun mental exercise becomes something more, as it becomes apparent that their musings have attracted attention of the most deadly sort.

Dear Halford, I love this book. I haven't read it in decades, and it was like meeting an old friend. Eco's use of language and imagery is both richly detailed and carefully written. In an early scene, we enter an apartment, and in a few short sentences, we experience it with all our senses/ Brilliant writing. The conclusion is appropriately confusing and unresolved, which is the only way you could end this book.

Was any of it real? Was The Plan a flight of fancy or did these three men accidentally reveal an ancient secret? We don't know, and we don't care, because the book is just that good.



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A People's History of the United States - my review

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Good grief, if you weren't pissed off before. . .

This is a history of our nation with all the glory stripped off, the high ideals we get taught in schools sanded away, and all the concepts that this is a fair and equal nation stripped off and tossed in the junk pile. This is a history of the people who actually build this nation, bled for it, and died to make it. The workers, be they slaves, indentured servants, or just the average working class.

It is also the story about how, from the founding of Jamestown, the scales have been tipped towards the rich. This book examines without mercy the treatment of Indian tribes, especially when they began taking in runaway slaves and servants. It turns a cold eye on the real reasons behind the Revolution, and how the Constitution was by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich. It is an endless litany of massacres of anyone who defied the order, Black, White, or Indian; and how every attempt to organize labor was met with violence from the state.

It's disgusting. It's engrossing. And every American should read it.



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