[Fiipolera]

I've read both The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum and probably prefer the former, but mainly because I read it around the time I was studying a course entitled World Religions, which I studied immediately after another course on philosophy, and found the story to be easily the most breathtaking I'd ever read. Every page was immeasurably interesting and rewarding, and it just tied in with what I'd been learning with the courses.

With Foucault's Pendulum, I was equally as impressed, and every page prompted several "Wow! I never knew that" exclamations from myself, and several "Did you know..." conversation starters to my long-suffering friends, but the 'knowledge dump' didn't impress me as much, and I think, when I read this, I noticed its faults much more - which are the same in both novels, i.e. the untranslated Latin, which just gets in the way of reading.

It's a shame, really, that the religion/philosophy was just a passing interest/obsession, and I think this is probably clouding my memory of both novels, but I'm glad that I read The Name of the Rose at the time I did.

I would totally disagree with the statement that the first 70-75 pages [of Foucault's Pendulum] are tough to get through - the whole book is challenging, in my experience, but very rewarding also. When I read it, back in 2006, I was advised to ignore the information overload and just continue reading, a strategy which worked wonderfully.

ETA: The number references in johnr60's post is very interesting, as is the unreliable narrator idea in andy.'s post - I would agree that the unreliable narrator is an intentional literary technique rather than Eco being sloppy.