[thechat] Yet Another Stupid On-Line Test!

[Martin Burns]

On 4 Nov 2003, at 23:46, Terry Fowler wrote:

>> Oh! I see! Semiotics, eh? Hmmmmmm ... looks
>> interesting!
>> Okay, yeah ... Martin's right ... that *is* geeky.
>
> Hmm, that does sound vaguely familiar, but I haven't
> even touched the book, much less read it.

Name of the Rose is very much worthwhile, and has all *sorts* of little 
asides into religion, history, literature, politics, manuscript 
practicalities[1] and mazes that really embellish what is a cracking 
detective story. Having a smattering of Latin helps... although there 
is a book of annotations (The Key to the Name of the Rose) which 
translate most of the passages. The other game is 'spot the Sherlock 
Holmes references' - Eco's a fan, and they're all over the shop.

It's basically a 'murder in the monastery' - anyone who's read Cadfael 
will know the territory, but Cadfael is See Spot Run by comparison.

The film is good, but obviously without the richness of an 800 odd page 
book, but you do get to see Christian Slater's bum if that floats yer 
boat, and it has Sean Connery giving one of his better performances - 
one of his first after he came out as an old bloke.

[1] The book describes itself as both a palimpsest and "A manuscript. 
Naturally"

Cheers
Martin