finis Africae

It's always interesting when a character comes up with a turn of phrase which gives you a new point of view on their way of speaking. Not necessarily helpful, but interesting.

I see that Umberto Eco is dead. I remember reading The Name of the Rose when I was at school, and, being a teenager, skimming or failing to understand large chunks of it. I read it more intelligently later. It definitely helped inform my Library.

I did read other books and essays by him too, Foucault's Pendulum in particular, but it's The Name of the Rose that I think of first.

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A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

-- The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco