The #1book140 club is run by Jeff Howe, a journalism professor at Northeastern University and author of 'Crowdsourcing - How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business'. That was one book I had managed to finish. It was based on a piece he'd written for Wired in 2004. 

Despite following the 1book140 account on Twitter I had managed to completely miss the several rounds of discussion running up to the selection of  June's book of the month. It seems Jeff kicked off a discussion on Twitter and The Atlantic around what literary genre the group wanted to tackle, then asked for nominations, then shortlisted them, and then put it to the vote. 

Umberto Eco's 'The Name of the Rose' narrowly pipped Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon.

I have a poor record of completing novels -- perhaps one in three. If I'm not hooked within the first 20 pages or so I give up. And things got off to a bad start for me. The prologue is terribly long-winded. Eco is Italian and my hang-up about style being lost in translation seemed to be borne out by the torturous intro. This is the danger zone for me. I consulted the  twitterstream. 

That was oddly reassuring. Others were struggling but were battling on regardless. This felt a bit like peer pressure -- a Weight Watchers for reluctant readers.

One of the challenges with The Name of the Rose is that there is an enormous amount of unfamiliar religious jargon, a lot of latin quotes,  and a mass of  historical context for the various battles between different branches of christianity. Looking up the likes of 'curias', 'Aedificium','rubricators' was slowing me down.

 I was amused to see a suggestion that some sport could be had from this.

Getting into the substance of the book I started to worry about etiquette. Was this a Twitter thing so I should live tweet my reactions? Or was it a book club thing so I should wait until the end of the section for more in-depth discussion?  Throwing caution to the winds I proudly tweeted a literary connection I'd made.

Aha! Someone on the same wavelength. I wondered what others were saying and looked back at the comments tagged for the first section.

The same idea. Great minds think alike. But why hadn't Cherie seen my comment? But then why hadn' t I looked at the stream before I'd tweeted? Later, I saw others reaching the same conclusion oblivious to what had gone before.

I was impressed at how books seemed to be the store of wealth within the network of monasteries and religious buildings around the civilised world. Baghdad's thirteen libraries is mentioned in awed tones during one passage. The Library within the Name of the Rose was being set up as the most important part of the place. Off I went again: