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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
I mean, there’s no plot, it’s 165 pages of the same writing prompt, “imagine a city”. Am I missing something? Was I supposed to read this as a novel or was I supposed to open at a random page and write a short story based on one of the cities described? This book just didn’t grab me, at all.
2020 Popsugar Ultimate Reading Challenge
40 - Your favorite prompt from a past Popsugar Reading Challenge
Aangezien dit het eerste jaar is dat ik meedoe, heb ik gekozen voor een prompt van vorig jaar.
"A book with unconventionally numbered chapters"
ook past het boek in diverse andere prompts zoals "A book you can finish in a day" en "Recommended by a friend" aangezien ik dit moest lezen van vriendlief.
Het boek geeft prachtige beschrijvingen van de ontmoeting tussen Marco Polo en Kubilay Kan. Polo vertelt over de verschillende steden die hij tegenkwam op zijn reizen. Hoewel de bewoordingen en beschrijving echt prachtig zijn, is het niet helemaal mijn stijl.
40 - Your favorite prompt from a past Popsugar Reading Challenge
Aangezien dit het eerste jaar is dat ik meedoe, heb ik gekozen voor een prompt van vorig jaar.
"A book with unconventionally numbered chapters"
ook past het boek in diverse andere prompts zoals "A book you can finish in a day" en "Recommended by a friend" aangezien ik dit moest lezen van vriendlief.
Het boek geeft prachtige beschrijvingen van de ontmoeting tussen Marco Polo en Kubilay Kan. Polo vertelt over de verschillende steden die hij tegenkwam op zijn reizen. Hoewel de bewoordingen en beschrijving echt prachtig zijn, is het niet helemaal mijn stijl.
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
A novel in which the structure is the story, and the small vignettes describing various cities serves as the bricks on which the city of the novel is built. If you take a look at the Wikipedia page for this novel, you can see the themes of the chapters arranged in a beautiful matrix that represents the constrained writing Calvino employs here. There are beautiful passages in here, but I wonder what the experience would feel like on a re-read where I read each theme in order all at once. The only other Calvino novel I've read is If on a Winter's Night a Traveller but he seems like such a structurally inventive writer.
Calvino's Invisible Cities is a true masterwork.
It is a beautifully crafted novel of ideas and conversations that are both conceptually sound and sublimely written.
The novel as a whole, consists of a prolonged conversation, think Arabian Nights, where two protagonists, Marco Polo and the Khan, discuss and describe at length, various cities in their physical and metaphysical states of being.
To go into more detail is to take away from the sheer pleasure of discovery. Strongly recommended and a new addition to my personal Top 10 list.
Memorable lines, (No spoilers but some conclusions to the description of cities may be found below) :
'Desires are already memories'
'The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content'
'Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts'
'Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist'
'My gaze is that of a man meditating, lost in thought- I admit it. But yours? You cross archipelagos, tundras, mountain ranges. You would do as well never moving from here.'
'The more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there'
'You advance always with your head turned back? or Is what you see always behind you? or rather, does your journey take place only in the past?'
'The traveller's pas changes according to the route he has followed
'The foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places'
'Marcoenters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square.'
'Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.'
'if existence in all its moments is all of itself, Zoe is the place of indivisible existence'
'Cities, like reams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else'
'Falsehood is never in words; it is in things'
'Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said."Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.'
'You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.'
'the form of things can be discerned better at a distance'
'The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes.'
'Travelling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: the assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name'
'The catalogue of forms is endless'
It is a beautifully crafted novel of ideas and conversations that are both conceptually sound and sublimely written.
The novel as a whole, consists of a prolonged conversation, think Arabian Nights, where two protagonists, Marco Polo and the Khan, discuss and describe at length, various cities in their physical and metaphysical states of being.
To go into more detail is to take away from the sheer pleasure of discovery. Strongly recommended and a new addition to my personal Top 10 list.
Memorable lines, (No spoilers but some conclusions to the description of cities may be found below) :
'Desires are already memories'
'The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content'
'Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts'
'Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist'
'My gaze is that of a man meditating, lost in thought- I admit it. But yours? You cross archipelagos, tundras, mountain ranges. You would do as well never moving from here.'
'The more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there'
'You advance always with your head turned back? or Is what you see always behind you? or rather, does your journey take place only in the past?'
'The traveller's pas changes according to the route he has followed
'The foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places'
'Marcoenters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square.'
'Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.'
'if existence in all its moments is all of itself, Zoe is the place of indivisible existence'
'Cities, like reams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else'
'Falsehood is never in words; it is in things'
'Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said."Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.'
'You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.'
'the form of things can be discerned better at a distance'
'The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes.'
'Travelling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: the assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name'
'The catalogue of forms is endless'
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
informative
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
inspiring
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A