Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Three bored editors make up "The Plan," an explanation connecting all things occult and determining where the point of all power on Earth is located: under the titular pendulum in Paris. The story covers how they developed The Plan and the unexpected events that follow its creation. Think "DaVinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" combined, well-written and with a bit of actual scholarship behind it.

Eco is a master of language, story and history and of weaving them all together into a ripping good yarn. The book definitely kept me turning pages (the relatively short chapters helped with that as well). But Eco also never met a list he didn't like. Lists that go on for paragraphs. Lists that the reader knows contain some tidbit she'll need later, but longs to skip. He also took one pivotal conversation between the three editors and broke it into six or seven chapters. While long chapters can be daunting to some, this just broke the narrative tension too much and made it easier instead of harder to put the book down.

I also think the length was unnecessary. Eco may have reached the rarified status of an author no editor wants to cut. An editor should have cut. The aforementioned lists could go. So could a secondary story set in South America of about 75 pages that gave us one somewhat key piece of information that could be related in another place. There are long forays into Belbo's (one of the editors) past that really add nothing to the main storyline. The focus should remain on Casaubon, the editor who starts as a student writing a thesis on the Knights Templar. He sets everything in motion.

Still, I felt it well worth powering through the 623 pages in order to get to the satisfying end.