BLDGBLOG & Focault's Pendulum

I've been enjoying reading of "Architectural conjecture, Urban Speculation, and Landscape Future" in BLDGBLOG (bldgblog_feed) lately. The current entry is about the recently-discovered remains of an underground city in present-day Turkey:

No one knows how many underground cities lie beneath Cappadocia. Eight have been discovered, and many smaller villages, but there are doubtless more. The biggest, Derinkuyu, wasn't discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he'd never seen, which led to still another, and another. ...

Another recent entry reviews Beneath the Neon, a book about a growing network of storm drain tunnels beneath Las Vegas and the people that inhabit them; another mentions a hotel made entirely out of salt, in Bolivia. It seems like a good blog: interesting, and infrequent enough to not become annoying. Recommended.

I was also amused by his mention of a certain book:

However, it also reminded me of a scene from Foucault's Pendulum – which is overwhelmingly my favorite novel (something I say with great and somewhat embarrassed hesitation because no one I have ever recommended it to – literally no one – has enjoyed, or even finished reading, it) – where we read about a French town called Provins.

My friends list seems to be full of Umberto Eco fans. I didn't, however, get through the book. The writing itself was very fine, but I just didn't care about the interwoven stories of ancient secret societies. I kept waiting for something to happen, and eventually got bored. I did like the beginning (the museum scene), and the story about the colonel in Provins, and the interloping into a secret ritual. But the bulk of the text: well-written but boring. I gave my copy away at yami_mcmoots's media-swap.