Rebekah got The Original of Laura for Christmas. I'll probably read it someday, but there's probably no point until I've read something else of his, like Pale Fire.




A book is a book is a book. Sure, it's short, but I read longer ones too. I wouldn't have considered that I'd done it properly if I'd read all or mostly one-hour or two-hour books, but I had to allow myself a few.




I bought it in, um, 2002 I think, and got about a third of the way in before getting distracted and forgetting about it. I'd been meaning to give it another go for ages. I'm glad I did.



Lord of Light is awesome. Confusing at first, but when you work it out, it's well worth it. And it's really short. I've not read Amber, but I don't think it's like that at all – Lord of Light could only ever have been a stand-alone.




I was distinctly unimpressed, and probably won't bother with the rest of them. However, I think this is probably the fault of the poor English translation. I'm sure it's much better in Russian, but unfortunately I can't read it.




The end was hilarious. Hail Eris!




Yeah, you can really tell when it was written. But it's thoughtful. I thought it was fun that he put the Wandering Jew into a post-apocalyptic future, and I have a worrying feeling that, if we did almost destroy the world like that, the Catholic Church really would refuse to die.




I thought it was fun, but I did find it a bit weird how the book started out fairly firmly moored to reality, but then came adrift and floated out into (copied) fantasy. I'm more used to books establishing their required level of suspension-of-disbelief early on, and sticking to it.




Because it's a book, I read it in its entirety, and it took me a week to read. I certainly didn't have time to read anything else in the week before my Contract exam. Why shouldn't I count it? My studying cuts into my other reading enough as it is – I can't count most of it as I don't tend to read academic books from cover to cover, just the chapters I need for the assignment.




I found it all a bit much, to be honest. And too slow. I think my favourite Eco is probably The Name of the Rose (the only one I've read that's not on this list).