Foucalt's Pendulum

I always meant to get around to reading some Umberto Eco, and with his death this past February, I finally buckled down and got to it. I'll get to The Name of the Rose eventually, but first up is Foucalt's Pendulum. Published in the 1989, this book caused a bit of a stir much later in 2004 when The Da Vinci Code was the biggest book on the planet, because as the two dealt with similar subjects, some considered Foucalt's Pendulum the better book, one worth a read for anyone whose interest had been piqued by Da Vinci Code. It's a similar bit of speculative fiction dealing with the Knights Templar, but as far as I'm concerned, that's where the similarities end. Sure, there's a bit of a thriller built around the story too, but nothing close to the plot-heavy exposition of Da Vinci Code- we start in media res, with a protagonist named Casauban hiding away in a museum minutes before it closes, expecting some amount of action to play out at the titular Foucalt's Pendulum, but what will happen and why is something that won't be known for another 500 pages. Instead we get a lengthy tale of three publishers who decide to come up with their own conspiracy theory, seeking to answer what ever happened to the Knights Templar in the 1300s, and whether they still existed today. The rest of the book sees them working on this conspiracy, swaying back and forth (like some kind of weight on the end of a string...) between making it up, and believing their made-up stories to be true. While I found the idea interesting, the book was incredibly dense with historical references. Eco certainly did his homework, and I respect him for that, but it made things drag now and then, and I did plenty of skimming over sections of history. The ending was a little weird too- I can buy conspiracies about secret societies laying in wait, hatching plans that take centuries to pay off, but the pseudoscience introduced late in the book ruined my immersion. Still though, it gives the last fifty pages or so some high stakes as we return to Casauban in the museum, finally seeing what all of this was for. While the ending had a pretty great payoff, it seemed to take too long getting there. But I'll read The Name of the Rose as well anyway before I make any judgement on Eco.