Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

To call this novel erudite would be a grave understatement. In fact, if anything its mindblowing erudition works against it at times as there's only so much you can be baffled by before the references put you to sleep. I'd read and loved this when I was 20 and I read it again at nearly 50. As is often the case, you find something very different upon reread, but in this case I was actually stunned (and chilled) and how contemporary the substance of it is. In a nutshell, Foucault's Pendulum is about educated people who build fallacies so intricate to try and explain what they don't understand that they end up believing in them. In that sense, the novel is more chilling now than it was 30 years ago. Still a masterpiece, though not always digestible.