Umberto.

I wish I was smarter so I could read books with cool covers like this.

But I guess I’m not.

I really, really tried. I couldn’t. To my tight little mind, it sucked. I read and I read, thinking surely that something that’s being hailed as an instant masterpiece would somehow, somewhere get a little bit better. Or maybe even, gosh, readable.

It didn’t and I finally caved after about a hundred pages.

I’d wanted to walk through airports carrying my Umberto Eco, looking smugly like I was somebody who knew something. Like maybe I could leave Lee Childs and Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk behind and be a differently more intellectual somebody.

But I couldn’t.

I still like the cover, though.

Maybe I’ll just wrap The Prague Cemetery dust jacket around another book and when a smooth somebody asks me how I find Umberto Eco, I’ll smootly say-

Rewarding.