The Name of the Rose is one of those books that I read at an impressionable age and was terribly impressed by it. I read it again a few years later and it was better still. It’s firmly in my top ten.

One of the bloggers that I follow has started a virtual book club – The Rose in Winter – and invited readers to revisit the book that has been called “the most popular unpopular book” with him.

This’ll be a new experience for me as I have never taken part in a book club or shared reading before (unless you count Jeff and I pair-reading 1984 to remind ourselves that 2004 was really not so bad) and I managed to boycott all my Eng. Lit. classes at school (loved reading, hated talking about it).

I really shouldn’t start another book until I finish one of the other 6 or 7 that I already have on the go, but I don’t think I can resist the challenge and I happen to have a copy right here. I even have a spare copy if anyone wants to come along for the ride.

précis: Sean Connery reprises his James Bond role in the guise of a mediæval monk and proto-scientist and solves a murder mystery that foreshadows the Reformation. No wait, that was the movie. The book is just like that but with more Latin and more Aristotle. The sex scene is even better in the book than in the movie but that might just be my fevered imagination infecting my memory.

Dare I risk another reading?

I have been here before. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance went from life-changer to pretentious crap on a third reading, but I am willing to risk destroying another memory on the off-chance that the book is as enjoyable as I remember.