This really should be under a miscellaneous header..but it`s okay.

Yesterday I finished reading Umberto Eco`s new novel Baudolino.

I am very satisfied, it was well worth the time and effort – while I suspect quite a few of us will be surprised reading the book through a second time, as certainly were the case with his epic The Name of the Rose – when details, subplots,symbols,characters,coincidences will begin to form new coherent patterns – it read like a “tall tale” , a tradition Eco does homage in his story of young Baudolino`s coincidential entry into capital letter “H” – History…
From a squalid,poor background as the surviving son of his farming parents in rural Fraschetta – his qualities as a fantast, a “liar” with qualities of imagination and fervour unparalleled by your common con-artists, impresses a passing red-haired, red-bearded German Knight, who just happens to be Frederick the IInd, nicknamed “Barbarossa” (red-beard) – thus Baudolino became the adopted son of what would become the first Holy Roman Emperor. Eco has Baudolino following on the campaigns of his “father”, and have him studying in Paris, and introducing the idea of intellectual freedom and self-sovereignty in the universities(?).. whiling the time as students would, only a fraction of daylight spent in the intense quest for erudition – Baudolino plots for the advantage of his father, Frederick II. This is where the story speeds up and grows… Byzantine.. in intrigues..

While not desiring to give any more away.. there are some ingredients which perhaps isnt too obvious from the blurbs and reviews, but which are quite interesting to the type of people I associate and correspond with.. these are, in no particular order: Continue reading →