Baudolino [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

~ Umberto Eco (Author), William Weaver (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt (October 15, 2002)
• ISBN-10: 2702869874
• ISBN-13: 978-2702869871
• ASIN: B0006Q1ULQ
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,097,292 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tiresome, tiresome, tiresome . . ., December 10, 2005

By	J. A. Hurley (Rockwall, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Though I was intrigued by the novel after reading Eco's The Name of the Rose, I found the book unbearably dull. It took me about six months to finish it, just because I kept picking up other more interesting books to read. I eventually suffered through it. I have seen this book numerous times on bargains shelves in various stores, and I always have to fight the urge to complain to management about having the nerve to sell such a laborious read.
The Name of the Rose receives high marks from me. Baudolino -- not so much.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastical, July 7, 2008

By	Matthew Jeray Hill (Fort Walton Beach Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To be sure, Baudolino is as fine an adventure from a different time and place as can be found. Stacked up to Umberto Eco's other works of fiction Baudolino is the most fanciful of the group. In Baudolino Eco Lends beauty to medieval times, and tells the most truth through a most prolific liar.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Baudolino the Opportunist, September 28, 2005

By	Aaron Winborn "AaronWinborn.com" (Harrisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews

I've recently started reading Umberto Eco's Baudolino, a rambunctious tale of a thirteenth century opportunist. "The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things."

Although I'm only 120 pages into this 500 page novel, I'm engrossed by the weaving plots and rich characters. Baudolino is an Italian peasant with a gift for languages and a bald-faced liar who is adopted by an emperor as a boy and falls in love with the emperor's young bride as a teenager. He studies at the University of Paris in its first years, and befriends a wannabe poet and a moorish scholar, and the three of them are off now on worldly quests, befuddled by alcohol and "green honey".

The thirteenth century was an influential time for so many elements of our modern society, seeing the usurpation of the church in Europe by the birth of the university, science, nationalism and capitalism, for all the good and bad that it all heralded. This book thus far does a great job of chronicling this from the perspective of someone entrenched in the middle of it all. It's great fun to compare our modern knowledge with that of a medieval persona.

I'll let you know what I think when I'm done with it, but so far, I'd highly recommend Umberto Eco's Baudolino.