Audiobook8 hours
How to Write a Thesis
Written by Umberto Eco
Narrated by Sean Pratt
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
By the time Umberto Eco published his best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, he was one of Italy's most celebrated intellectuals, a distinguished academic and the author of influential works on semiotics. Some years before that, in 1977, Eco published a little book for his students, How to Write a Thesis, in which he offered useful advice on all the steps involved in researching and writing a thesis -- from choosing a topic to organizing a work schedule to writing the final draft. Now in its twenty-third edition in Italy and translated into seventeen languages, How to Write a Thesis has become a classic. Remarkably, this is its first, long overdue publication in English.
Eco's approach is anything but dry and academic. He not only offers practical advice but also considers larger questions about the value of the thesis-writing exercise. How to Write a Thesis is unlike any other writing manual. It reads like a novel. It is opinionated. It is frequently irreverent, sometimes polemical, and often hilarious. Eco advises students how to avoid "thesis neurosis" and he answers the important question "Must You Read Books?" He reminds students "You are not Proust" and "Write everything that comes into your head, but only in the first draft." Of course, there was no Internet in 1977, but Eco's index card research system offers important lessons about critical thinking and information curating for students of today who may be burdened by Big Data.
Eco's approach is anything but dry and academic. He not only offers practical advice but also considers larger questions about the value of the thesis-writing exercise. How to Write a Thesis is unlike any other writing manual. It reads like a novel. It is opinionated. It is frequently irreverent, sometimes polemical, and often hilarious. Eco advises students how to avoid "thesis neurosis" and he answers the important question "Must You Read Books?" He reminds students "You are not Proust" and "Write everything that comes into your head, but only in the first draft." Of course, there was no Internet in 1977, but Eco's index card research system offers important lessons about critical thinking and information curating for students of today who may be burdened by Big Data.
Author
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was the author of numerous essay collections and seven novels, including The Name of the Rose, The Prague Cemetery, and Inventing the Enemy. He received Italy’s highest literary award, the Premio Strega; was named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government; and was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Reviews for How to Write a Thesis
Rating: 3.9198472427480913 out of 5 stars
4/5
131 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book, given that author wanted to tell completely inexperienced students how to perform their day-to-day work on their thesis. Its approach is still state-of-art, but particulars became replaced with the tools of the 21st century: typewriter with LaTeX, literature index folder with Zotero, markers with annotated PDFs. I started to use Trello to organise literature that has some backlog items (such as read references and come back etc.). Don't think it's too old to be useful.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read this book to help me in preparing my master's dissertation in Engineering, and it was very helpfull, specially because Eco writes in a pleasant way, using humor and keeping the seriousness the subject demands. Although it's a technical work, I experienced almost the same pleasure reading it as I did in his The Name of the Rose.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco, even an ‘updated’ version in this MIT Press edition, felt like a sweet exercise in futility. There’s something folksy and quaint about being told how to put notes on index cards and properly organize them and being given tips for using the library and talking to librarians. (Not too surprising, as Eco wrote this in the late seventies—almost forty years ago!) But with over twenty-three editions and countless translations, there’s something to be said about this just-won’t-die thesis-writing guide. It endures, even in a world of Dropbox and Evernote and Endnote and online style guides and, of course, the oracle of information—the internet.The reason for this is that Eco’s book actually has a lot more to say to people outside of academia, to those no longer writing long tracts of academic esoterica or using words like ‘juxtaposition,’ ‘asymmetricality,’ or ‘reconfigurations’ in everyday writing.How to Write a Thesis could be easily re-titled ‘How to Live a More Realized Life’ or something along those lines—tongue-in-cheek, of course, as this is Eco and despite all the rhapsody in his prose is actually quite funny. What Eco’s classic tome gives us is the kind of advice you might get from an inspiring college graduation speech. It resonates with wisdom about being more curious, about being more engaged in the world—which is wonderful advice, especially for those who stand on the precipice of maturity, where on one side is youthful idealism and optimism still, and on the other side, lingering over the horizon, is the embittered resignation and indifference of...middle age? Just because you’re not a hot young thing in your twenties anymore doesn’t mean you can’t experience that revelatory process of discovery in other aspects of life.Eco takes on the usual mechanics of the thesis-writing process—coming up with the right research question; outlining; collating notes—and expands on it so that it becomes a jumping off point to exploring the notions of creativity, originality, and attribution. There is a section on developing core ideas and then using those ideas to explore more peripheral ideas; often, the true thrust of a thesis comes in those minor works and footnotes. I also liked his ideas on how to approach the work of others. My favorite rule of thumb from the book is: “Work on a contemporary author as if he were ancient, and an ancient one as if he were contemporary … You will have more fun and write a better thesis.” Eco also has much to say on the obsession with spending too much time compiling information (he calls it the “alibi of photocopies”); it makes for a watered down, unfocused, blurry project. We’re all guilty of this in some way. How often do we bookmark and save articles we come across on the Web and never really get to? Eco is basically saying, ‘Don’t be a hoarder.’ Don’t do the equivalent of bottom trawling and hoping that there will be a prize fish in all the bycatch. One solution: Better outlining and a read-now attitude (don’t stockpile; read soon, and then decide to keep or toss).I know it’s weird to think this but reading How to Write a Thesis felt very homey. It was very much a feel-good book; like being treated to home cooking. It reminds the academic to not be so insulated and narcissistic (reality check: odds are, only a handful of people will ever read your work in its entirety). And it reminds the rest of us of the worth of slowing down and digesting information thoughtfully, with care and consideration (no skimming), and of the the worth of committing to a task.[Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest and candid review.]