Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
This was a delight. I learned a little bit about medieval Italy and the plague (apparently the worst in European history) that wrecked the population and I had lots of laughs. The story here is that seven women and three men left disease-ravaged Florence to distract themselves in the nearby countryside by singing, dancing, and telling stories. Each in the company tells a story each day for ten days. More often than not, the stories stick to a common theme for the day, and more often than not, they're at least a little bawdy.
Boccaccio's book (and his sources) served as source material for some of the stories most of us read from Chaucer, and his book makes me want to go back and reread The Canterbury Tales. It's a pretty long read (in this edition, about 800 pages plus about 140 pages of introductory matter and a bunch of end notes), and though I enjoyed it and didn't ever quite get bogged down, I imagine that many would find it tedious in spite of the belly laughs it so often inspires. It's definitely one I'll dip into from time to time in the future (I dog-eared the best of the dirty jokes).
Boccaccio's book (and his sources) served as source material for some of the stories most of us read from Chaucer, and his book makes me want to go back and reread The Canterbury Tales. It's a pretty long read (in this edition, about 800 pages plus about 140 pages of introductory matter and a bunch of end notes), and though I enjoyed it and didn't ever quite get bogged down, I imagine that many would find it tedious in spite of the belly laughs it so often inspires. It's definitely one I'll dip into from time to time in the future (I dog-eared the best of the dirty jokes).
adventurous
challenging
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
adventurous
funny
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
Not going to write too much about this, as I have a couple of papers to write on it for school and fear I will be written out HOWEVER this book is great. One of the first Italian vernacular prose novels, made up of 100 novellas (10 stories narrated by 10 characters over 10 days), set and write in the days of the Black Death. This is in my opinion the humanist equivalent of Dante's Divine Comedy, but sadly it it has not been treated as such until the last 30 years. This book works on so many levels, it is great read, the stories always entertaining but infused with so much hidden meaning. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good and often bawdy tale with depth. Also given it's structure it is one you can digest slowly.
Wickedly funny and insightful.
Boccaccio uses humor, double entendre's and euphemisms to weave tales of love, fate, fortune, religion, hypocrisy and the shortcoming of the religious leaders of his day (he's outright brutal to them).
I would love to give this a longer review.
Boccaccio uses humor, double entendre's and euphemisms to weave tales of love, fate, fortune, religion, hypocrisy and the shortcoming of the religious leaders of his day (he's outright brutal to them).
I would love to give this a longer review.