The name of the rose - Umberto Eco, finally!

I have attempted this book 3 times in the last 20 years, finally got done with it during the world-altering pandemic - which is heartbreakingly going on strong.

Either my connecting dots capability is highly brilliant or everything is really connected to everything - put your money on the second. This book felt just right to balance of the existential crisis that the pandemic and Camus brought about In me.

It had all the elements of a good read - exceptional writing - where philosophy, religion, culture, tradition and murders was woven with intelligence, love, acceptance of humanity and laugh out loud humour. Umberto, I waited too long.

The story line is simple, a suicide in one of the monasteries in Italy propels the higher powers to send a Franciscan friar (picture Sean Connery, he played the role in the movie) and a novice Franciscan monk to investigate. One suicide turns into 5 (murder/suicides, that is part of the mystery) and along with this intrigue, church and state politics of early 14th century christianity in Italy also gets tackled in excruciating depth.

And really, the best part is that its all about the different kinds of love people have for books - which of course holds the knowledge, so technically love for knowledge. The good, bad, ugly and downright murderous, I got on board with that right away. I understand the compulsion all too well. The main part of the story takes place in the scriptorium (library), swooned as he spent 3 pages describing it. Will leave it at this - I don't want to given too much of the plot away.

The hardest part of the read was the depth of theology he goes into - and for someone like me who has basic 'went to a convent school knowledge of the history of christianity', I was looking up every name, place, thing that came up in the book. Took me easily a week longer to finish it. Basic premise that I took away from the part of history he was talking about - there were two sides (maybe more) and they had opposite views on how rich the church should be. And everyone wants their point of view on what the 'truth' is/should be to be the universal one. Don’t we all.

The death plot and the debate on poverty gets intertwined as you go deeper into the story and like I said in the beginning, its all connected. The antagonist is the furthest I have seen anyone go to prevent others from finding out proof that would kill his belief. Well, maybe not.

A few lines that I adored:

1. Roger Bacon - 'the aim of learning was also to prolong basic life'.

2. 'It is only petty men that seem normal'. I have been counted out as normal, mostly by me, a long time ago.

3. 'I have the impression that hell is heaven seen from the other side. From what side?'

4. 'In order for there to be a mirror of the world, it is necessary that the world have form.'

5. 'Everyone is heretical, everyone is orthodox. The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers'. Ufff, don't you love this guy?

6. A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams'.

7. Books (all books) are not made to be believed but to be subjected to inquiry. We mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means'.

8. The best one - 'but what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn't believe in it?'

9. 'But instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become a slave of none'. A man after my own head, this applies to so many things. Including what many are struggling with right now - attached to one way of living our lives and causing so much mental anguish and pain to ourselves crying about how things were.

10. 'Where is all my wisdom then? I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe. The order that our mind imagines is like a ladder or net, built to attain something. But afterwards you must throw the ladder away, beacuse you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless'.

11. Some ancient books he mentions - Alhazen, De aspectibus; Al Kuwarizmi, Tabulae; Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus (about unicorns), Coena Cypriani, Poetics of Aristotle, and so many more.

Going to watch Sean Connery this weekend. And there is a series on the book too, will watch that as well.

Do read the book, it will profoundly remind you why you actually love reading.