Here’s something for Valentine’s Day.
Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?
In college and for a time afterwards, I was obsessed with Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. I must have read it at least 8 times. I read Eco’s other works, including his semiotics, and would have considered him a favorite author.
A few years ago I decided it was time re-read Foucault’s Pendulum. I delighted in the prospect of rediscovering a work that I remembered to be rich, suspenseful, mind-bending, and fun.
Sad to say, I found a book that was thin, tedious, obtuse, and dull. I think it’s a book that only makes sense to a pseudo-intellectual twit in his/her twenties.
I was disappointed, to say the least. And I also recently discovered that the movie version of Eco’s The Name of the Rose doesn’t hold up so well, either.
The movie version does not hold well. However, the book does. I do like it.
My BTT post!
Our own age and views certainly impact our views on books, don’t they?
it’s sad 🙂
The Name of the Rose is a decent book. The sense of time and place is fantastic. It does drag sometimes, making me think he reproduced the unhurried medieval pace a little too well.
LOL!
I loved ‘The Name of the Rose’ the first time I read it but the second time I had to read it in a rush and found it impossible to read that way. I’m just hoping that at some point I will have sufficient leisure time to go back and read it for a third time and rediscover the pleasure of that first encounter.
I should reread that one.
This is such a great question, and I love your answer. Can’t come up with one of my own–probably because I tend to keep picking up new authors!
you playah, you 🙂
I have The Name of the Rose sitting on my shelf. Someday I’ll get to it.
Have to say, I never fell out of love with Eco because I never fell in love with him. I couldn’t get through Foucault’s Pendulum, probably because I never even rose to pseudo-intellectualism when I tried to read him in my twenties. The author I fell out of love with was Ayn Rand…
Oh, man! I have Foucault’s Pendulum in my TBR pile…hehe I guess that book will get bumped back until I’ve forgotten the bad review. 🙂
gentle–i’m sure you’re not the only one 🙂
trish–you should join chris & read “rose” instead–
oh The Name of the Rose is utterly wonderful, but I’ve never found Foucault’s Pendulum even vaguely temping. I’m stalled 3/4 the way through Baudelino at the moment, and will get back to it at some point, but it doesn’t hold a candle to The Name of the Rose.
I didn’t read that one–published after I fell out of love–