does this ever get better? hundred pages in and its just a guy giving a history lesson about the templars to his friends in a bar, they all seem kinda gay too desu

>>24572907 (OP)
What is the arcana in The Count of Monte Cristo?

>>24572907 (OP)
>they all seem kinda gay
They're Italian

you need to be very educated and knowledgeable to get and enjoy this book bra

>>24573113
Name of the Rose is much more approachable, but you'll still be on wikipedia half the time you read if you're like me and know next to nothing about the church and its various schisms during the middle ages.

>>24573158
The name of the rose is one of the few instances in literature where the movie is better than the book.

>>24573113
I'm not so sure about that. Whenever they start talking about The Plan or Casaubon is investigating something sure; but the heart of the story lies in Belbo's childhood and Lia becoming a mother, and those chapters anyone can grasp without needing a PhD in occult studies

I thought it got good after 20 pages

>>24572907 (OP)
Everything up to where he gets spooked by his taxidermist neighbor is basically a prologue

>>24572907 (OP)
The best part of this book is the way it shows the sort of petty political squabbles common among so-called occultists

>>24572907 (OP)
I didn't think this was very good, definitely not a recommended read. Having already read Name of the Rose, which is better, I decided I'm done with Eco‘s fiction after this

>>24573113
People who say this appear to think having heard of the Risorgimento or Rosicrucianism requires some impossible command of esoteric knowledge. I think the book is more entertaining if you don't know going in and it introduces those things to you, so you look them up and do research while reading. That drive for knowledge outside of the novel is what Eco aims to inspire in the reader I think

At any rate if you go in expecting an interesting conspiracy to unravel you definitely will not get that. The personal relationships and more mundane aspects of the novel are uninteresting, embarassing, lame. Boomerslop

Focault really wrote this shit? Thought nigga was a philosopher

>>24572907 (OP)
It's a grand conspiracy theory that spans centuries and continents.
But too grand for you, apparently.

>>24575924
He was gay..

>>24575303
Seriously, it's full of peak Boomercore pastimes, I don't think more than 3 pages go by without one of the characters talking to their friends, or having sex. I was cringing so hard that I could no longer physically hold onto the book.

>>24572907 (OP)
>its just a guy giving a history lesson about the templars to his friends in a bar
Sounds great.