Ye Olde Staging Point

I am what you might call an Umberto Eco fanboy. The Name of the Rose might be my favorite novel of all time, and I loved both Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before. Heck, I've even tried (unsucessfully) to slog through Eco's nonfiction (I made it a full 150 pages into this book before my brain exploded). Which is all to say that it is extremely odd that I am not enjoying his latest novel, Baudolino, nearly as much as I should be. It's well-written, it's humorous, it's set during one of the most fascinating periods of history... but two months after purchasing it, I'm still languishing around page 200. Either Eco is losing his creative edge, or (oh the shame) multiple viewings of the thrice-damned Dungeons and Dragons movie have actually eroded my intellectual ability to recognize great literature when it's thrust in front of me. I'm afraid we all know which is the more probable explanation.