[cableshaft]

Last year was a terrible year for me for reading. I think I only completed one book, and that's Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

The book is full of describing some different fictional city (or is it? one passage suggests maybe that's not the case), often with a different theme or flavor of strangeness that might be a metaphor for something in our lives. Every so often it changes it up by having Marco Polo (who is telling the stories of these cities) have a conversation with Kublai Khan.

I don't know if I enjoyed it as much as everyone else did (going off the almost universal glowing critic and reader reviews). Part of that might have been because I kept assuming the story was leading to some big reveal or something bigger than the structure of '4 chapters each describing a fantastical city followed by 1 chapter of conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan'. I wanted something that tied it all together and made me go 'Aha! That's clever!'.

I never got that. If it was just billed as like a bunch of short vignettes about fantastical cities and that's it (no conversations), I might have just enjoyed picking it up, flipping to a random city, reading it, and enjoying it that way. The conversations periodically kept misleading me into thinking it was more than that, and I ended up getting impatient with the city chapters, wanting to get to the conversations where I was hoping a little more of the real story got revealed.

I'm still somewhat hopeful there really is more to it and I just missed it, although reading some reader reviews didn't seem to suggest otherwise.

That being said, maybe check it out, and if you go into it without the expectation that there's a grand overarching story to it you might enjoy it more. And some of the city vignettes were quite interesting. Although there were more misses than hits for me amongst them.

[rcarr]

I might be wrong but I think I remember reading that the book is meant to be a love letter to the Italian city Venice and that all the “cities” are actually just describing Venice from different perspectives.

Edit: Just had a quick look at the Wikipedia page.

> In one key exchange in the middle of the book, Kublai prods Polo to tell him of the one city he has never mentioned directly—his hometown. Polo's response: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."

[cableshaft]

Yeah, I was trying not to spoil that, but that's what I meant when I said "(or is it? one passage suggests maybe that's not the case)".

That was interesting to think about when I got to that point, but wasn't enough for me.

[rcarr]

Ah fair enough. I think I went into the book knowing that already so I enjoyed it. I think I’d either recently visited Venice or went shortly after reading the book so it resonated with me. I think if I was going into the book expecting a standard novel then I would be disappointed.

[cableshaft]

I've never been to Venice so perhaps I would appreciate it more after that.

I did become a bit more interested in visiting Venice after watching this one video by DamiLee on Hurry Sickness and how the structure of Venice is like a labyrinth, designed to slow you down and encourage you to wander, as if it were somewhat of a soul-healing mechanism. She also mentions Invisible Cities in the video:

https://youtu.be/iuIZuUCKd84

[rcarr]

It’s absolutely incredible. It literally feels magical, like you’ve stepped through a portal into another realm. We walked around and deliberately got lost just to see where we ended up. One moment you’re on some bustling tourist street with throngs of people, the next you’re on some quiet passageway where all you can hear is the water, turn another corner and all of a sudden you’re in a courtyard and there are couples ballroom dancing in the moonlight. It really is an amazing place.