Weekly "what are you reading" Thread #86

I finished Foucault's Pendulum a couple days ago. When I was about 1/4 of the way through it, I had described it as the grandfather of other religious mystery adventure stuff like Da Vinci Code, and my impression of that aspect didn't change much. Without spoiling anything, the book revolves around a trio of weird intellectuals who work in publishing. One of them studied the Templars in college, one of them is obsessed with numerology, and all of them are way up their own asses about history. They're all fascinated with secret society occult/esotericism stuff, but they are highly cynical and don't think any of it is real. Seeing the resurgence of interest in esotericism in the mid 1980s, they hatch a plot with their company's owner to try to publish books that capture that type of audience.

That's about all I can say about it without giving away too much. It's worth reading, although it drags in the last hundred pages or so as Umberto Eco just can't help himself from cramming in way more historical detail than you ever could possibly expect, which is a thing he always does, but this time all the information is of questionable veracity, so you're not even learning anything that matters. I still think it's a very good book, though.