I am a huge fan of Umberto Eco, and his novels (Rose and Foucault's Pendulum) and I had high hopes for this collection of essays. Eco is very satirical in these essays, sometimes too much so; the satirical and exaggerating style that is combined with very unusual translation style (ancient words that do not reach the nice rhythm of Eco's otherwise great storytellin in his other works) just got me tired of reading this book. These stories just do not entertain me this time.Here and there I was able to find a nice story but only few. Language just doesn't get to its pace, and I also have say that majority of the stories are dated for readers in 2006. Stories about telefaxes, etc. are not relevant anymore. But also the general problem of satirical essays is that they are very much tied to the present day when they're written.Overall, not a bad collection but nowhere near to my expectations.