I must have started Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" about 30 times, before I decided to miss out the first few chapters and discover how good the book was.

Umberto Eco - The name of the rose. I kept giving up a few chapters in. I think I finally got stuck in when I couldn’t sleep on a flight.

Middlemarch and The Name of the Rose - I had multiple goes at both but was just too young. Also have a theory that you can only read Margaret Drabble’s novels when you are roughly the age she was when she wrote them, which is working perfectly so far.

Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. A whodunit set in an Italian monastery in the 14th century and primarily concerned with semiotics. It is long enough to feature a 10 page description of a door.