≫ Read Gratis Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 9780156453806 Books

Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 9780156453806 Books

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Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 9780156453806 Books

What more do you say about a book that's this good? I enjoyed it when I was twenty, enjoyed rereading it when I was forty, and enjoyed rerereading it when I was sixty. That doesn't happen very often. It is a book that is spoiled by too much analysis, which gets in the way of the evocative nature of the read. Mailer called it a meditation, and talking while meditating rarely satisfies.


Tags : Invisible Cities [Italo Calvino] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <DIV><B>“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,Italo Calvino,Invisible Cities,Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,0156453800,General,Biographical fiction,Biographical fiction.,Kublai Khan - Fiction,Polo, Marco - Fiction,1216-1294,1254?-1323?,Classics,FICTION Classics,FICTION General,Fantasy,Fiction,Kublai Khan,Kublai Khan,,Literature - Classics Criticism,Polo, Marco,Polo, Marco,,Science fiction,Literature: Classics

Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 9780156453806 Books Reviews

I am not a writer or an English Major; just an avid reader who loves to read good books. This was the strangest literary book I have ever read. It was written in the format of Marco Polo discussing cities of the world to Kublai Kahn some ancient and some contemporary. The writer Italo Calvino
is an Italian, and it was written in Italian but the translation to English was done excellently. I love the authors writing style, it is so flowing, almost like
poetry, and such fun to read. In addition the words and the stories gives you something to think about even after you finish the book. It is a good book to re read. I intuitively thought this, but now it been conceptualized that every town and city is different and in different ways. That's the fun and
learning of travel especially the world where the language and culture are so distinctly different. A book not for kids, but you will just love this book.
bpysz
This is a series of brief vignettes about fantastical cities, as told by the explorer of an ancient empire. It's incredibly imaginative; fluidly written, almost poetic; and offers keen insights into human nature. The story of the explorer and the emperor is equally intriguing.
I've never read anything like this before, it's dreamlike and surreal. A few short pages that are mystical and powerful describing mysterious, magical cities, some in the past and some in the future. It's complex and at times perplexing but always imaginative.

Many times I went back and forth rereading passages that resonated with me.What else can I tell you? it's prose that urges you to reflect and ponder.

Worthy of the higher rating simply because it's a story that defies description and genre and has prose that you simply fall into and become immersed in.
What, in all this great world can we possess or control? What do we understand and what, in any case, does it mean to understand? When we say, “I live here,” what can we possibly be talking about? “Invisible Cities” poses these questions and many others suggesting, without coming right out and saying it, that the key is to keep asking and that, when we live this way, question and answer arise together in the same breath.
In telling of many cities, Calvino tells of all cities, of the "everycity". In, exquisite, timeless prose, he tells the story of all of us. It is my intention and expectation to read this book, as others read their bibles continually and for the rest of my life.
This short book, more than anything else, is about the power that words have to evoke a setting, utterly and completely. The cities that Marco Polo describes do not exist, but gosh, you wish they did. This is where Calvino's genius for description, for using just the right word to get across exactly what he wants the reader to take away, really comes through. I wish I could read Italian because I can't help feeling that something must have been lost in translation. This is not because I read a bad translation - I didn't, the language was beautiful - but because I feel like each word was chosen with such care that I would like to read the book in Calvino's chosen language. In a way, I felt like each chapter was a poem. They were all so short - between two and three pages long - and they evoked such a sense of nostalgia for places that do not even exist, and with such a succinct use of words - that they felt very poem-like to me.

I read this while traveling, which I think was ideal. As you walk around unfamiliar places, I think you notice things that the locals ignore or don't think about any more, and you are very aware of how the city feels and what its personality is. Calvino takes that feeling to an extreme by making his cities as magical as possible so that you have a sense not just of the physical attributes of the city, but the more nebulous aspects, too - the atmosphere and vibe that are so hard to describe to other people.

And each chapter is such a delight. I don't want to ruin the experience of reading something so different for you, but I do want you to get a sense of what is waiting for you. There's one city that exists on a spiderweb. One that is built in men's dreams of chasing a woman. One that has only the plumbing but none of the buildings. One that is built entirely on massive stilts. So many inventive and creative places to visit!

This was a different, completely new, kind of treat, and I think if you go into the book knowing that it really is just a series of vignettes that describe cities you wish truly were in our world, then you would really enjoy it. The language is beautiful, and the cities - I wish there were accompanying illustrations for each chapter!
I like to go back and re-read books. Invisible Cities, more than any other novel, feels fresh and new each time. Every chapter talks about a city with a different name and the cities that resonate with you the most will change depending on what you're going through in life at that moment, or what you've experienced since the last time you read it. The chapters that speak to me now are not the ones that spoke to me eight years ago when a friend first recommended this to me (though they're all worth reading again and again). Even when I'm not reading it front to back, I like to pull it off the shelf and thumb through it to revisit my old favorites and also to rethink chapters I may have skimmed over before.

What's really interesting is hearing what other people have to say about Invisible Cities. Though it's not a complicated book, the few friends I've talked to seem to have gotten something different from it. This novel is easy to love, easy to share and discuss, and yet I feel that it's my own. Any book is different depending on who reads it, but none more so than Invisible Cities.
What more do you say about a book that's this good? I enjoyed it when I was twenty, enjoyed rereading it when I was forty, and enjoyed rerereading it when I was sixty. That doesn't happen very often. It is a book that is spoiled by too much analysis, which gets in the way of the evocative nature of the read. Mailer called it a meditation, and talking while meditating rarely satisfies.