Rating: 
Summary: The Italian version is MUCH better
Review: I can understand what the 'one-star reviews' are refering to when they equate reading this book to 2 months of hard labour. The English version is not a pleasure to read due to the faulty translation.
Do not kill the writer for it'was the messenger who changed the text.
Rating: 
Summary: Turgid
Review: I was disappointed in reading this highly touted work. I expected more than the rambling plotless work I encountered. I may have melodramatic tastes, but I found this novel to have too little forward momentum, and too many eddies and backwaters of trivial arcanae.And these backwaters are not exactly limpid pools, but often just stagnant water. There is an interesting premise-a group of people at a publishers act as "agents provocateurs" in order to bring occult groups out of the woodwork. They succeed to some extent, but what they uncover was hardly worth the trouble. A more interesting idea might have been to have them bring to light something truly diabolical (we're talking fiction, right?). I would rank this on a par with "The Da Vinci Code"-but for quite other reasons.
Rating: 
Summary: Foucault's Filter
Review: Foucault's Pedulum is a title I have been meaning to read for the past 15 yrs - I remember seeing it on a bookseller's shelf and trying to decide between it and Prime Evil back in 1988. Suffice to say ended up with the latter, which BTW, is also outstanding. Although I can read pretty much anything Eco writes, Foucault is even better than TNoTR, IMO. Without giving anything away, all I can say about this book is *don't* read it if you don't meet the following criteria, otherwise you're going to visit a public forum like this one and complain how boring it was and that you had to use a dictionary. In order to enjoy Eco and/or Foucault's Pendulum you must: 1. Possess an advanced vocabulary/intellect that rises above a 6th grade comprehension level
2. Possess an undying thirst for knowledge leaning particularly in the direction of the esoteric such as the Knights Templar, alchemy, the medieval and other assorted liberal arts/classical literature/historical pursuits. In short, if you feel the need to read everything on Oprah's book list and/or read every Grisham you can get your hands on, then chances are, Eco is just *not* for you.
Rating:
Summary: As good as the Name of the Rose
Review: I enjoyed this as much as the Name of the Rose. It's different in that it has a different focus but the focus is still an informative and entertaining one. Unlike the Name of the Rose, this book is set in modern-day (1970's) Italy. The historical and arcane context is one of people today looking back at history. The book is about three academics who get together based on their common interest in subjects such as the Templars and their trial, secret societies, mystical traditions and Kabbalah. They set up a publishing house for books of the occult, part of which involves a desire to publish the most crazy theories, in order to entertain themselves about how stupid some beliefs are. However, then they decide to formulate a theory of their own. They make up a Grand Scheme, the Great Conspiracy involving every major event and mystical society/concept from the last few centuries. The problem is - their theory starts to take over... Many readers accuse Eco of being pretentious in the level of erudition of his prose. In this book, certain passages are especially of that nature, quoting obscure historical references, names and texts by the hundreds. But it's after reading this book that it becomes clear - it's a parody. This book is a great and genuinely funny parody of the New Age movement with all the occultism and gnosticism. No stone is left unturned in the quest to connect pieces of the world in an obscure way. The book, like The Name of the Rose, is full of tension and lamentation on the limitations of knowledge and the like. But, it is much more funny and playful. There's the sense of modern-day irony which was harder to achieve in The Name of the Rose as that was from a medieval point of view. Finally, the book has a great, weird and unexpected ending that ties some ends together in a very interesting way. If you've ever been interested in the occult OR cynical about it, chances are you'll absolutely love this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Mixing a good old fashioned suspense tale with Medieval Mysticism, secret organizations, and the Holy Grail, Eco has, once again, created a modern masterpiece that will leave the critics debating for years to come. This is an excellent book, but not one for the faint-of-heart. Eco plays with the tale's timeline, and readers may need to have a dictionary and an encyclopedia handy.
Rating:
Summary: Read the book and get a life!
Review: If you've read the other reviews on this site, you know that Umberto Eco's book touches on nearly every conspiracy theory, cult and secret society in history. As a former editor, I smiled at the premise of editors taking a holiday from their normally critical objectivity and hijacking the nearest computer to create their own fantastic conspiracy. I won't travel the same ground as the other reviewers. I will say that this book works well as a mystery and a history lesson. It's fun to read, although the material is often challenging. Trying to keep all of the historical factors straight is no easy task, and Eco's writing style makes the reader work hard for the payoff. Fortunately, the payoff is worth the time and trouble. Simply put, Eco seems to make the case that no matter how far out and ridiculous a conspiracy theory is -- even one created as a joke -- there are plenty of lunatics out there willing to believe it. Just look around you at the people so desperate for an identity that they pose as modern-day witches, "channel" Shirley MacLaine through their toaster or fancy themselves the reincarnation of Nostradamus. Please read this book and remember it next time someone tries to sell you on a new Kennedy conspiracy, UFO hoax, secret code that unlocks the universe or the latest New Age fad. Belief in such nonsense has more to do with the weakness and desperation of the believer than it does with hard facts. I'm not worried that someone is controlling our lives; I'm worried that too many lives are out of control.
Rating:
Summary: Irony, Obession and Wit
Review: Packed with intrigue, philosophical puzzles and metaphysical conundrums, Eco uses his astounding knowledge of history and language to gently, and mercilessly, poke fun at pseudo-medievalism and new age conspiracy theory. The story centres around three book editors, all impoverished refugees from the time when useless learning was still revered, start scratching a living from editing the sort of books that appear in the kind of shops that sell reproduction native American dream-catchers. Bored with reading too many badly-written manuscripts, they decide to use all of them to cook up an elaborate conspiracy theory surrounding the mythic Knights Templar. Things go wrong when the Occultists they are satirising abandon their essential oils and druidic romps in the woods to chase after them, thinking that our heroes have, by underhanded erudition, stumbled on the Great Secrets of the Universe. With a full cast of sorcerers, magi, immortals, intellectuals, cabalists and beautiful women, Eco combines astonishing erudition and a wicked sense of irony. The novel is, in essence, a deeply moving observation of obsession, and Eco careful exposes the human lust for the Secret Society and Ancient Wisdom as nothing more than a petty, and futile, lust for power: all the great secrets that the occultists kill for are illusions and hoaxes. The book also carries an interesting sub-theme of linguistic philosophy: language is the world we live in, and to manipulate it is to manipulate the fabric of the universe. It stands alongside Voltaire and Swift as a great philosophical tale. This book is the perfect antidote of you have, like young acolytes of most religions, become disillusioned with the New Age Movement and all the rest of it: Foucoult's Pendulum is a savage, but most efficacious, remedy.
Rating:
Summary: Wasn't good 15 years ago, and hasn't aged gracefully
Review: Eco would surely make a poor poker player--the poor guy can't hide his emotions and feelings, especially as it relates to alternative interpretations of Religion. As this book plods along, the reader gets a really good sense that Eco has some unbridled disgust for anti-establishment. Well, it shows, as by the end of the book, he is literally mocking these anti-establishment folks. I was hoping to not have to sift through Eco's pretentious word choices and sentence structure. Thankfully I did not. Instead, I was visited with "name drop blitzkreig". In other words, Eco just threw one name, group, ancient location, etc. after another. Was it to impress? I have no idea, but most of it didn't move the plot forward. Eco at least had a good subject matter for his plot, I can give him that much. The way to get to the conclusion, however, was muddled with a lot of nonesense and unnecessary verbage.
Rating:
Summary: "The Da Vinci Code" for the Mensa set
Review: This is a maddening, dense, and often incomprenhensible text, and come the final chapter, you might wonder if you've only been chasing Hitchcock's fabled MacGuffin. But for the pure joy of a book that will send you scrambling equally for the dictionary and the encyclopedia, I can't recommend "Foucault's Pendulum" highly enough. Altho' the book takes place in the present, the main characters are delving into a liturgical and literary mystery that ranges across the centuries to include Rosecrucrucians, Templars, Cathars, Crusaders, Jesuits, Freemasons...basically any vaguely shady offshoot of medieval Catholicism. Not only are the protagonists investigating this mystery, they are also INVENTING the mystery as they go, discovering that their own farfetched speculations are either actually true or are being misinterpreted as true by a Neo-Gnostic group who are anxious to get their hands on the mystical lost treasures of the Knights Templars. The book covers much of the same territory as Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" and in fact, both books very nearly end in the geographic location with the same infuriating lack of closure. But whereas the "Da Vinci Code" is basically a car chase with a Bible, "Foucault's Pendulum" sits quietly under the library lamp, in the quiet pursuit of the unknowable, and the ending--like Thomas Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49"--leaves the reader teetering upon the brink of revelation.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting premise, weak writing
Review: I recall reading 'War and Peace,' and realizing at some point that the underlying thesis of the book was to discredit Napoleon. In 'Foucault's Pendulum,' Umberto Eco essentially writes a harsh invective at people obsessed with the occult; those people who take everything in the past, present, and future, and aligns it with their fringe creeds. Eco's efforts fall far short, however. A frequent problem occurs when a scholar writes a novel centering on his/her area of academic expertise: that is, all characters seem to become mouthpieces of the author, all afflicted by the author's own weirdness. In 'Foucault's Pendulum,' the characters all had the same voice and personality (i.e. that of Eco himself). Eco fails to have this obsessed adventure into the occult interface with the normal world; all characters are self-contained in this nonsensical delirium Templars and Rosicrucians and Druids and Cabalists. Having a more detached interest in such subjects, I never cared about any of the characters. The characters were unidimensional, nonhuman, not believable, and their presentation lacked any psychological astuteness. There was no (credible) portrayal of love, hate, good, evil; there was no interesting or meaningful conflict or resolution. The rare portrayals of envy are simple and not sustained. Eco's writing is a veritable catalogue of obscure names, places, events, and arcana all linked in some way with the occult. Early in the book I was captivated enough to try and confirm or corroborate some of his references. Later on I didn't care. Eco's complete lack of economy and judgement perhaps illustrates the faults of his characters, but it is so excessive and unfiltered that it just becomes cumbersome. In the end, despite the promise of his thesis and themes, I felt 'Foucault's Pendulum' lay somewhere between a work of shameless vanity on Eco's part (i.e. 'look at how much I know') and the ramblings of an idiot savant that can do no more than list hundreds of names from history. Eco seems to have tried writing a vast senior thesis in the first person, without accomplishing much more than presenting his bibliography.
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