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Foucault's Pendulum
Foucault's Pendulum
Author: Umberto Eco, William Weaver (Translator)
Three clever book editors, inspired by an extraordinary fable they heard years before, decide to have a little fun. Randomly feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entries, they think they are creating a long lazy game -- until the game starts taking over.... — Here is an ...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780345368751
ISBN-10: 0345368754
Publication Date: 11/13/1990
Pages: 560
Rating:
  • Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
 187

3.3 stars, based on 187 ratings
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

mayqueene avatar reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on
Helpful Score: 6
This is an amazingly rich and complex book about a series of mysteries, codes, conspiracies, and hidden lore. The ending certainly isn't what you expect going into this book but I found it to be serious food for thought.

I won't kid you, it is a very hard book to get into initially, but if you stick with it and don't focus so much on keeping track of every tiny thread, you will really enjoy it. When I feel a need to challenge myself mentally I pick up my hardcover copy and dive into it again and again.

One more thing, I did love his Name of the Rose book a great deal, but this is nothing like it. Please don't pick this up expecting it to be...we are talking apples and oranges here. Two really great fruits, but in essence nothing alike.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 10 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
Hang in there! It takes a while to get into Midnight's Children but the storytelling is astounding. Rushdie's writing in this novel reminds me of Marquez/Love in the Time of Cholera. A great read.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 10 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
A masterpiece. As noted by another reviewer... this is not the most accessible of books. Having some familiarity with medieval history, secret societies and occult traditions is a huge help in really appreciating this book. But... that being said, I think it's an amazing book. I've read it several times and would highly recommend it.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 7 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Excellent conspiracy theory-a million times better than Dan Brown.
radhika avatar reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 13 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
This is a very cerebral book, it requires alot of focus and knowledge of some cultural points that quite honestly even I'm not aware of. I bought it because it was recommended to me by a friend, but Umberto Eco is far too difficult a write for me to swallow. Perhaps someone else may be able to break through the complicated and rather boring first chapter.
Read All 46 Book Reviews of "Foucaults Pendulum"

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ceyton avatar reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 10 more book reviews
One of my favorite books ever. Dense intellectual games with a qabalist's sense of humor.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 11 more book reviews
One of the most amazing books I have ever read! Literaly changed my world view. There are so many levels to this book. Opened my mind to things I had never thought about. I read this book when I was 17, and it just blew my mind. One of the few books I read over and over again. I have probly read it at leat 50 times. I also give this book as a gift to everyone I know!
austinstar avatar reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 4 more book reviews
Very difficult to read. I did not like this book.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on
One of the few books I've had to read with a dictionary at my side, but I enjoyed it immensely. It reminds me of The DaVinci Code, but with some more meat on its bones.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 8 more book reviews
A long, rambling and utterly fascinating book about the Knights Templar and conspiracy theories in general. If you liked Da Vinci Code but would love to read something with a little more "meat", this is the book for you.
starrynight avatar reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on
"An intellectual adventure story"
glaws avatar reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 7 more book reviews
From Publishers Weekly:

If a copy (often unread) of The Name of the Rose on the coffee table was a badge of intellectual superiority in 1983, Eco's second novel--also an intellectual blockbuster--should prove more accessible. This complex psychological thriller chronicles the development of a literary joke that plunges its perpetrators into deadly peril. The narrator, Casaubon, an expert on the medieval Knights Templars, and two editors working in a branch of a vanity press publishing house in Milan, are told about a purported coded message revealing a secret plan set in motion by the Knights Templars centuries ago when the society was forced underground. As a lark, the three decide to invent a history of the occult tying a variety of phenomena to the mysterious machinations of the Order. Feeding their inspirations into a computer, they become obsessed with their story, dreaming up links between the Templars and just about every occult manifestation throughout history, and predicting that culmination of the Templars' scheme to take over the world is close at hand. The plan becomes real to them--and eventually to the mysterious They, who want the information the trio has "discovered." Dense, packed with meaning, often startlingly provocative, the novel is a mixture of metaphysical meditation, detective story, computer handbook, introduction to physics and philosophy, historical survey, mathematical puzzle, compendium of religious and cultural mythology, guide to the Torah (Hebrew, rather than Latin contributes to the puzzle here, but is restricted mainly to chapter headings), reference manual to the occult, the hermetic mysteries, the Rosicrucians, the Jesuits, the Freemasons-- ad infinitum . The narrative eventually becomes heavy with the accumulated weight of data and supposition, and overwrought with implication, and its climax may leave readers underwhelmed. Until that point, however, this is an intriguing cerebral exercise in which Eco slyly suggests that intellectual arrogance can come to no good end.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal:

Student of philology in 1970s Milan, Casaubon is completing a thesis on the Templars, a monastic knighthood disbanded in the 1300s for questionable practices. At Pilades Bar, he meets up with Jacopo Belbo, an editor of obscure texts at Garamond Press. Together with Belbo's colleague Diotallevi, they scrutinize the fantastic theories of a prospective author, Colonel Ardenti, who claims that for seven centuries the Templars have been carrying out a complex scheme of revenge. When Ardenti disappears mysteriously, the three begin using their detailed knowledge of the occult sciences to construct a Plan for the Templars[...] In his compulsively readable new novel, Eco plays with "the notion that everything might be mysteriously related to everything else," suggesting that we ourselves create the connections that make up reality. As in his best-selling The Name of the Rose, he relies on abstruse reasoning without losing the reader, for he knows how to use "the polyphony of ideas" as much for effect as for content. Indeed, with its investigation of the ever-popular occult, this highly entertaining novel should be every bit as successful as its predecessor. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/89. -- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 813 more book reviews
I finished this by mere force of effort. It lies somewhere between Joyce and Garcia Marquez, but without the sexual perversity or obscenity of Pynchon. You wont miss anything be skipping this book.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 6 more book reviews
All of India, captured in a single book.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 12 more book reviews
Very good. Thank you.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 9 more book reviews
Very dense, humorous, and interesting.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 28 more book reviews
This book was translated from Italian by William Weaver.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 73 more book reviews
Good and unusual book about 3 publishers who accidentally crack the code of the ancient Knights of the Templar and the trouble that follows.
reviewed Foucault's Pendulum on + 98 more book reviews
It has been a while since I read this book, but I remember that what I liked about it (and I did like it very much) were some of the same things I liked about the Da Vinci Code. Mysterious consipracies involving anceint sects, that kind of thing. A little tough to get into at first, but worthwhile in the end.

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