This is a selection of the short columns Umberto Eco wrote for L'Espresso magazine between 2000 and his death in 2015. Most are both entertaining and erudite, as you would expect, but the problem with collections of journalism is that they so quickly become out of date, and there is not enough meat really in many of the columns to sustain them. Eco is rightly critical of George W Bush, and catalogues some of his infelicities with language as symbolic of his lack of intelligence; yet Bush now seems benign compared to Trump. He rightly predicts that attention spans will decline with the advent of mobile phones; he rightly observes that "being noticed" is most people's main aim in life and deplores a culture of instant and meaningless celebrity. Sometimes he's wrong; many of us thought that the internet would be a tool of enlightenment, rather than causing the narrowing of minds which it actually has. Eco thinks that China's bureaucrats will be unable to tame the Internet - he was wrong about that, not only has the Internet been controlled in China but they've taught others how to do it too

So whilst this is entertaining enough, it feels out of date, and that's not surprising. Journalism is made to be consumed in the now. I did like his comment about screen actors and porn actors being immediately differentiated by the quality of their dental work though ( )

Umberto Eco became famous – outside Italy, at least – for the novel The Name of the Rose. He was also an essayist; Chronicles of a Liquid Society was his last book, a collection of columns he’d written for the Italian magazine l’Espresso. All of them are worthwhile. In some, Eco comes across as a grouchy old man – for example, when he proposes the Built-in Organized Orderly Knowledge device, that doesn’t need batteries. It’s been done before. In others he’s a voice of reason crying in the wilderness – when he notes that while it the response of Muslim fundamentalists to attempting to hold the Miss World contest in Nigeria was appalling (200 killed), it was pretty stupid for the contest organizers to put it there. And some times he’s just as saddened as the rest of us – initial enthusiasm for things like the internet and cells phones is gradually dampened as these devices fail to live up to their promise. One of the ironies is the number of columns criticizing George W. Bush; as I’m writing this in October 2019 I’m betting a lot of Eco’s readers would be absolutely delighted if W. magically returned as president. There are other essays that now appear quaint and dated – complaints about Windows Vista and the idea that the Internet can’t be censored. A number are about the pleasures of reading and books, something obviously dear to me. Eco says his personal passion for books is almost embarrassing – “…it’s rather like being a pervert who makes love to goats”. And if you’ll excuse me, a cute little nanny is waiting. ( )