Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - David R. - GoodreadsEco's day job is professor of Semiotics at Bologna University, and this book (a set of five lectures) shows him to fine effect. However, it lies at a significant level of academic prose and the ... Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Smcleish - GoodreadsOriginally published on my blog here in October 2000. Some of Eco's essays in semiotics (those in Travels in Hyperreality, for example), are to me fairly impenetrable. The five in this collection are ... Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Kristofer - GoodreadsIn this collection of essays, Italian semiotician and novelist Eco undertakes a wide-ranging exploration of such themes as the manner in which false ideas and paradigms nevertheless yield real ... Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Jafr - GoodreadsWarning: this book is heavy on linguistic theory. He starts with the premise that serendipitious discoveries can happen from false ideas, then jumps straight into the debate of sacred "given ... Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Brent Legault - GoodreadsI liked the language and loved the lunacy, but I wish it were a real, cohesive book, rather than a bunch of pieced-together essays and speeches. The incessant summarizing of information already ... Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Tim - GoodreadsIt seems I am less interested in the minutiae of linguistic history than I thought I would be. An interesting first essay then four others that lost my attention quickly. Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Jonfaith - GoodreadsSomewhere in an earlier Alomodovar film, maybe Flower of the Secret, a character describes a scenario for a film, one which actually A would eventually create as Volver. I really like that, the ... Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Wally - GoodreadsEco's thinking on any number of subjects always fascinates, but here he examines linguistic history from a number of angles. You don't have to know much about semiotics to understand him, but it might help. Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Lorna - GoodreadsWe know about the power of true ideas to effect change. But what about the power of false ideas? In this fascinating short work, Umberto Eco (author of novels including The Name of the Rose, and in ... Read full review
Review: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
User Review - Eva Nickelson - GoodreadsI freely admit that most of this book was over my head. I have an interest in languages in the sense that I use a limited language set to convey ideas. There were a plethora of philosophers and ... Read full review
