Rating: 
Summary: I don't get it either ...
Review: This book is an amazing example of how peoples' tastes vary. I cannot see how anyone would rate it better than 2* -- it is difficult to read, contains many foreign phrases that are uncipherable unless you speak Latin and other languages, it has so many characters (with few physical descriptions) that I have trouble keeping track of them, and it continually digresses into topics that have no apparent connection to the plot. I am one-third of the way through the book and it's taken me three weeks to get that far because it puts me to sleep within 15 minutes and I can only wade through about 5 pages during that time. I keep reading it, however, because so many people seem to have enjoyed it that I figure it will sooner or later hit me. I hope so. I finally got frustrated and started reading another book (Plainsong) this week and was amazed that I was able to read that one cover to cover in three nights. (I had thought maybe my eyesight was getting bad.) By the way, if you don't like Name of the Rose, try Plainsong -- it was a great novel and very readable.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't get it
Review: Maybe I lack the classical training needed to appreciate this book. I found it tedious. The author is continually going off on long philosophic or pedantic discussions that as far as I could see had nothing to do with the development of the characters or the plot. After the first third of the book I found myself skipping many pages at a time to get to the place where he dropped the intellectual tedium and got back to the story. Call me shallow, but I just don't get pleasure out of this type of writing. As a positive note, it only took me a few pages until I was fast asleep.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the effort
Review: This is an interesting book, often well written, occasionally addictive, but it reads like a first novel - the glue shows through. The book's greatest strength is the character of William of Baskerville - Eco has created a funny, likeable, flawed hero who is able to hold together an uneven book. Adso is quite well drawn, but there are numerous inconsistencies in the characterisation of the young narrator. Sometimes he reveals a precocious intelligence in his dialogues with William; other times he is unbelievably dense -how could he fail (even under great stress) to differentiate between a book in Greek and one in Arabic script?There are several long descriptive passages. Some of these are extremely tedious, adding nothing to plot, character or the fascinating ideas Eco is exploring. One or two such passages can be useful in adding "local colour" but Eco overdoes it. He doesn't integrate the various elements in the book: he spends a few pages developing plot, then cuts and pastes a few pages of history, philosophy or church politics; then returns to the plot. The quality of the writing in each section is good, but at times one could be forgiven for wondering if it is a text book or a novel. The previous book I read on medieval heresy was a history book, yet the plot was stronger and more compelling than Eco's despite the fact that the former was restrained by historical fact. The above criticisms aside, Eco clearly has a great imagination and a witty, playful personality, The book has a beautifully written ending, many delightful passages and left this reader wanting to know even more about some of the many topics dealt with in the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Apocolyptic Whodunnit
Review: Starts out as a regular whodunnit, except it's in time long past. Then, the reader quickly sees that this is no ordinary mystery. Hopefully, readers will not simply be entertained, but changed instead.
Rating:
Summary: An intellectual discovery of the highest order
Review: Umberto Eco is the most complicated and most interesting authors in the world today (if you don't believe me, read Foucault's Pendulum). To call it a "mystery" is vastly oversimplifying things. The book is about discovery, and those who do not want things to be discovered. Shrouded in a cloak of historical reality (the poverty debate between the Papacy at Avignon and the ascendant Franciscan order), clever in even its most mundane details (the labyrinth of the library), the Name of the Rose is easily one of my top ten books of all time. Be forewarned: this book is not to be approached lightly; it is intellectual in every sense of the word, and despite its labelling as a mystery, it does not resemble contemporary mysteries at all.
A word of advice (for any Eco book): if you don't understand something, keep going. Either it will be explained or it will never come up again, in which case it need not be worried about.
Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful book.
Review: This book truly deserves the 4 star rating I have given it. The author has used different words throughout the whole book and it is very original. I have written an essay on it and it was as easy as ever because the book esspreses itself to you openly and selectivly. Many others will have the same opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Worth ploughing through the Latin, definitely
Review: Before I say anything about the book - I think the Editorial Review and the first Synopsis that appears above should be deleted. The Editorial gives the plot and the villain away and the Synopsis is just plain wrong - it's not the Franciscans suspected of heresy that William is after! Also, he initially arrives to the Benedictine abbey on a diplomatic mission, and gets involved only later in the investigation, and this of the murders, and not the stray Franciscans! Anyway, I first read The Name of the Rose in college, in a well-annotated Korean edition, and at that time I thought it was a great mystery but the historical/argumentative parts bogged it down a bit. Now I am reading it again in English, with a lot more appreciation and interest in Middle Age civilization and politics, and I am savoring every detail. It helps to have The Key to the Name of the Rose at hand, since the English edition doesn't offer any explanations on the Latin or the numerous historical figures mentioned (but The Key isn't perfect either - sometimes the glossary doesn't seem to offer enough pertinent information). I find myself laughing out loud at William's wickedly done impersonations of Sherlock Holmes. As Eco himself says, this is a story of and for people who love books, with all the usual possessiveness, curiosity and jealousy, and it is a really great read.
Rating:
Summary: Scruting through book, I smelled the fragrance of denotant
Review: This book is one of my greatest impressions in this year. I have read immediately after Fuko and the style of this author gave me a lot new impressions. The first thing, which is charectarized this book, is intellectualizm. It is full of ideas. Most of them very interesting and make me think about them much time. The second. I felt that I am in Middle Ages. MAybe the Eco is Sent-Germen? Maybe he sai it all? :)))
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant book, Brilliant parallels.
Review: William of Baskerville represents Sherlock Holmes. Why? 1st. The name is a clear indicator.( Hound of the Baskervilles ) 2nd. he is english. 3rd. He finds answers throuh logic. 4th. He is described very similarly to how Arthur Conan Doyle describes his sleuth. Adso represents Watson. 1st. His name: Adso sounds a lot like Watson. 2nd. He narrates the story ( like Watson ) 3rd. He is Baskervilles faithfull companion. Jorge of Burgos represents Argentinian fabulist and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Why? 1st. They are both blind 2nd. They have similar names 3rd. Borges was made Argentinas Chief librarian 4th. Borges poetry contains many references to libraries being like labrynths. Where does this leave me, I dont know, I just wanted to point it out. I know for a fact that Eco loves Borges, but why he used him in this book is beyond me. Nevertheless, excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece.
Review: I'd like to add to the many reviews of this book only a few comments about the meaning of the famous Latin sentence "Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus". Literaly it can be translated as "The ancient rose subsists thanks to its name, we have only bare names". It is an ancient sentence often quoted by s.c. nominalist philosophers of Middle Ages who thought that our mind isn't able to discover the true essence of things and so it isn't able a fortiori to have the minimum idea of God. In fact in medieval philosophy God was often compared to the figure of a rose; the nominalists wanted to say with the sentence that even God, the supreme being, persists only through its name, i.e. persists upon an extremely frail thing. Names were seen as simple "flatus vocis", "emission of voice" without value. The nominalist philosophers who declared that even God was a flatus vocis were condemned as heretics (a theme that recurs often in the novel). But here the sentence isn't quoted only for its historical value, but also because it can be applied also to the love of the young monk Adso; he meets in the monastry a young woman and perhaps falls in love with her. In his mind she is just the "rose", i.e. God, of whom he doesn't know the name (the woman and Adso speak different languages). It is then a very pitiful and sad thing that of the woman he doesn't know the name, because, if nominalist theories were true, he won't be able to keep with him, in his heart and mind, in his future life and old age, the remembrances of that encounter and of those days which changed his life and mind forever (cf. the pages of the novel where the old Adso comments on those evets).
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