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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
a book that feels like a dream
==
"With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire, or its reverse, a fear."
"Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams, with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories"
"Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."
"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...Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known."
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno we live everyday, that we form by being together."
==
Some fav and notable cities:
Diomira - envy
Isidora - old and young
Zora - unchanging
Zenobia - desires
Euphemia :) - by the fireplace
Sophronia - circus
Eutropia - diff lives
Ersilla - strings
Leandra - tiny species in homes
Baucis - above the cloud
Adelma - faces of the dead
Eusapia - land of the dead and the living
Leonia - daily refashioning
Irene - diff names
==
edit: 10/2024, and i still think about the cities here... i need to get myself a copy
==
"With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire, or its reverse, a fear."
"Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams, with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories"
"Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."
"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...Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known."
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno we live everyday, that we form by being together."
==
Some fav and notable cities:
Diomira - envy
Isidora - old and young
Zora - unchanging
Zenobia - desires
Euphemia :) - by the fireplace
Sophronia - circus
Eutropia - diff lives
Ersilla - strings
Leandra - tiny species in homes
Baucis - above the cloud
Adelma - faces of the dead
Eusapia - land of the dead and the living
Leonia - daily refashioning
Irene - diff names
==
edit: 10/2024, and i still think about the cities here... i need to get myself a copy
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
reflective
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
bro if you don't shut the fuck up i'm literally going to decree a stately pleasure dome
I do love a good story where the landscape is the real protagonist.
During a 50-year career as a translator, William Weaver translated the bulk of Umberto Eco's works and almost all of Italo Calvino's, as well as many other Italian authors, Italian poetry, and opera libretti. He was an ambulance driver in Italy during WWII, then lived primarily in Italy after the end of the war, meeting and befriending many of Italy's leading authors and intellectuals during the late 1940s and through the 1950s. His translation is elegant, eloquent, and excellent; his mastery of the language, evident. I highly recommend it as second only to the original Italian.
I do love a good story where the landscape is the real protagonist.
During a 50-year career as a translator, William Weaver translated the bulk of Umberto Eco's works and almost all of Italo Calvino's, as well as many other Italian authors, Italian poetry, and opera libretti. He was an ambulance driver in Italy during WWII, then lived primarily in Italy after the end of the war, meeting and befriending many of Italy's leading authors and intellectuals during the late 1940s and through the 1950s. His translation is elegant, eloquent, and excellent; his mastery of the language, evident. I highly recommend it as second only to the original Italian.
I read this immediately after finishing Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. What a brain shock! The two books form a stark and peculiar juxtaposition. But many of the things I love about Calvino's book are things that it shares with Kimmerer's. It is concerned with the relationships between humans and their environment, humans and time, humans and imagination, humans and material culture.
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
Another amazing Calvino - I feel that I could read his books over and over and still not get everything he has to say. Impossible to describe - but an amazing look at the world we live in, and how we inhabit it!