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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
dark
sad
slow-paced
My thoughts reading this book was: “huh, that’s a lot of Greeks and Italians in hell, huh?”
Let me tell you what this book is. This is the Avengers: Endgame of books.
What I mean by that is, unless you read 23 books worth of greek mythology, ancient greek history and especially Italian renaissance history; it’ll be like watching Avengers Endgame without having watched any of the other Marvel movies. This is what this book feels like.
The story is that Dante walks through hell and sees various mythological and historic (but not really) figures in there and goes “aw that sucks”. If you recognize the people (your best bet is the Greeks), you’ll go “huh, that’s neat”. If you don’t recognize them, like for example the Arc-duke of Apples and Cucumbers of Tuscany at the time, whom Dante didn’t like, you’ll just ignore whatever you’re reading until you get to the next chapter. In a way, it feels like a fan-fiction for Greek mythology and revenge-porn for all the people in Florence that Dante didn’t like.
I guess the seven rings of hell concept is cool. The punishments are cruel but nothing we haven’t done to each other ten times over.
Go watch Hazbin Hotel instead.
Let me tell you what this book is. This is the Avengers: Endgame of books.
What I mean by that is, unless you read 23 books worth of greek mythology, ancient greek history and especially Italian renaissance history; it’ll be like watching Avengers Endgame without having watched any of the other Marvel movies. This is what this book feels like.
The story is that Dante walks through hell and sees various mythological and historic (but not really) figures in there and goes “aw that sucks”. If you recognize the people (your best bet is the Greeks), you’ll go “huh, that’s neat”. If you don’t recognize them, like for example the Arc-duke of Apples and Cucumbers of Tuscany at the time, whom Dante didn’t like, you’ll just ignore whatever you’re reading until you get to the next chapter. In a way, it feels like a fan-fiction for Greek mythology and revenge-porn for all the people in Florence that Dante didn’t like.
I guess the seven rings of hell concept is cool. The punishments are cruel but nothing we haven’t done to each other ten times over.
Go watch Hazbin Hotel instead.
dante was so real for essentially writing a glorified biblical self-insert fan fic
adventurous
dark
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Banger
adventurous
dark
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Listen. I will have absolutely nothing meaningful to say about a book that probably takes up entire semesters at universities, so I'll just ramble a few opinions on my own experience with it and leave it at that.
This has more gossipy name dropping than a celebrity memoir. Unfortunately, I didn't know who half these heathens were, so I did utilize the notes at the end of each canto. I spent some time thinking about this being done in modern day - just assigning a bunch of folks you don't care for to various circles of Hell. How fun!
The little summary before the canto verses in my version (Ciardi translation) was useful as well, but it did take away a bit of the "fun challenge" in figuring out what is going on in the verses. Your utilization and enjoyment of that may vary depending on your experience with this style of writing. I found this translation to be a fairly easy (almost too easy?) read.
This was pretty wild. Between the aforementioned gossip, the figuring out what some of these poor sinning souls had done to be in their assigned "circle" of Hell, the varying punishments, the whiplash inducing "I feel so bad for that fella" vs "The sonava bleep deserves it!" (largely based on own biases it seems), and the Virgil worship, I felt like I was slowly losing my mind (but in a kind of fun way).
I'm having a hard time deciding if this is one of those great because it is great books or great because of when it was written books. Perhaps I would have felt more of the hype if I had been in school when I first read it? As it is, this wasn't bad. I'm happy I finally read it. I'll likely remember quite a bit of it years from now. I was sharing parts of it with my family frequently (completely against their will but that's neither here nor there). There is a lot in here to mull over, reread, digest.
A couple of my favorite lines:
. . . Season by season her changes change her changes endlessly.
(Plan to use this each time I'm being annoyingly indecisive in the future.)
Reader, so may God grant you to understand
my poem and profit from it, ask yourself
how I could check my tears, when near at hand
I saw the image of our humanity
distorted so that the tears that burst from their eyes
ran down the cleft of their buttocks.
(I know Dante is all torn up about these sinners having their heads forever facing backwards, but the image of them crying tears into their buttcracks is just too funny to not chuckle over).
This is tough to rate, so this is based completely on what my reading experience enjoyment was and not where I think it ranks on all books of all time (because quite frankly, I couldn't even begin to give a useful opinion on that).
3.5 Rounding to 4 Stars
This has more gossipy name dropping than a celebrity memoir. Unfortunately, I didn't know who half these heathens were, so I did utilize the notes at the end of each canto. I spent some time thinking about this being done in modern day - just assigning a bunch of folks you don't care for to various circles of Hell. How fun!
The little summary before the canto verses in my version (Ciardi translation) was useful as well, but it did take away a bit of the "fun challenge" in figuring out what is going on in the verses. Your utilization and enjoyment of that may vary depending on your experience with this style of writing. I found this translation to be a fairly easy (almost too easy?) read.
This was pretty wild. Between the aforementioned gossip, the figuring out what some of these poor sinning souls had done to be in their assigned "circle" of Hell, the varying punishments, the whiplash inducing "I feel so bad for that fella" vs "The sonava bleep deserves it!" (largely based on own biases it seems), and the Virgil worship, I felt like I was slowly losing my mind (but in a kind of fun way).
I'm having a hard time deciding if this is one of those great because it is great books or great because of when it was written books. Perhaps I would have felt more of the hype if I had been in school when I first read it? As it is, this wasn't bad. I'm happy I finally read it. I'll likely remember quite a bit of it years from now. I was sharing parts of it with my family frequently (completely against their will but that's neither here nor there). There is a lot in here to mull over, reread, digest.
A couple of my favorite lines:
. . . Season by season her changes change her changes endlessly.
(Plan to use this each time I'm being annoyingly indecisive in the future.)
Reader, so may God grant you to understand
my poem and profit from it, ask yourself
how I could check my tears, when near at hand
I saw the image of our humanity
distorted so that the tears that burst from their eyes
ran down the cleft of their buttocks.
(I know Dante is all torn up about these sinners having their heads forever facing backwards, but the image of them crying tears into their buttcracks is just too funny to not chuckle over).
This is tough to rate, so this is based completely on what my reading experience enjoyment was and not where I think it ranks on all books of all time (because quite frankly, I couldn't even begin to give a useful opinion on that).
3.5 Rounding to 4 Stars
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I am tired, bored, and confused. Also I don't really like poetry :/. The book isn't for me, and that's why I'm DNFing it.