I read this book in a week or so, but I feel like I've been reading it forever. This is a good thing. And now that it's over, I don't know what to do with myself. 
 I used this for the "mystery/thriller" prompt of the 2015 popsugar challenge, and yes, there is a murder mystery at the heart of the book. But there is so much more, as well! This is a historical fiction (emphasis on the historical) - but no, wait, it's also a deeply complex book on theology - no, it's a philosophical work on faith versus reason - you know what, there's even a decent sex scene, we may as well call it a romance too. ^_^ 
 I loved how the different plots - the murder mystery and the religious debates - wove in and around each other and built off the other as the book progressed. I loved that the author expected us, the readers, to be detectives as well, investigating (or not, it's up to us) the untranslated Latin and the big ten-dollar vocabulary words. This is a book of many layers, and I appreciated that there are multiple ways to read it. 
 Most of all, I loved that it was a book about books. My favorite scenes were the ones of William and Adso in the library, teasing out its secrets and exploring its treasures. Many of the debates were about books - what they mean, what they say, what should be read or written and what shouldn't. In a way, the library and the books in it became the most important characters of the story. They took on lives of their own. 
 "Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors."