Rating: 
Summary: the adventures of marco polo...
Review: if they were told by scherazade....the story is trippy...history mixed in with some sci-fi...nice thing about the book is you don't have to be a sci-fi or history buff to really appreciate it, because the story is so good. also try " if on a winter's night a traveller..."
Rating: 
Summary: The Endless Possibilities of Human Creativity
Review: This is one of my two or three all-time favorite books. Why? Because Calvino manages to capture and express the endless possibilities for human creativity. Cities are the highest expression of human culture and organization. In Invisible Cities, Calvino creates and describes dozens of cities which don't exist in reality, but which do exist in the narrator's memory, longing, and imagination. Each of these cities is a possibility, each one consisting of bits and pieces of other places which do exist or could exist. By illustrating all of the possibilities that these imaginary cities represent, Calvino shows his appreciation for the diverse possibilities of human creativity. And he does it in concise and beautiful language which combines the power of memory and the dreams of what could be. In less than 200 pages, this book transports the reader to dozens of new and yet familiar worlds.
Rating:
Summary: Polo vs Kublai in the world's series of cities.
Review: Marco Polo arrived in Katai (now China) by traveling as long as 3 years and a half. He would be staying at the Kublai Khan's court for 17 years as ambassador and governor. Thanks to his experience and travels book the commercial enterprise will develop into the Far East during the next centuries. Most of the cities Polo had written of don't exist in the modern era. Some changed their name. Kublai Khan was chief of an endless empire whose capital he established in Khanbalik (Peking). He ruled from Mongolia to Tibet, from China to Birman: was he a right and wise sovereign too? Polo would answer affirmative, but we know he had been an employee by Kublai who paid the duties to him for a fortune! It's common knowledge in Italy that the memories of Polo were titled 'The Million' to remember such a wealth. This is the history... "Why do you lie, foreigner?". Kublai Khan noticed all the cities Polo told him were seeming to resemble as though the passing from one to another shouldn't imply a journey but an exchange of elements only. Promptly Khan was going to browse on his atlas the maps of the cities which threaten from nightmares and curses: Enoch, Babylon, Yahoo, Butua, Brave New World... And this is "The Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino. Maybe you too, while surfing the Net, realize the differences are going to vanish and each city looks like all other cities, an out-and-out dust swarms into the continents. Cities akin to Dante's Inferno? Read the book or write to me to get answer!
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: For many people Invisible Cities is their favorite Calvino novel. While it is not quite mine (I prefer If on a Winter's Night a Traveller and The Baron in the Trees) no one would deny this book's singular beauty and charm. Marco Polo and Kublai Khan discuss a host of cities, which are in fact all just one city. In a series of exquisite tales, Calvino tells of Cities and memory, Cites and desire, Cities and signs, Thin cities, Trading Cities, Cities and Eyes, Cities and Names, Cities and the Dead, Cities and the Sky, Continuous Cities, Hidden Cities, all arranged in such a manner as to remind one of Pascal and Fibonnaci.Calvino's ingenuity is striking. There is the memory city of Isidora, the dreamed off city of youthful passion and pleasure which is only encountered by the old who remember it. There is the stilt city of Thin Zenobia. There is the city of Eusapia who made beneath it an underground necropolis for its dead who in turn has so influenced the surface that one can no longer tell who is alive or dead. There is the continous city of Leonia which throws out everything each day and replaces it with the completely new. I think my favorite is the hidden city of Theodora, which after successfully exterminating all the vermin, found itself plagued with sphinxes, unicorns, hydras and basilisks. An unforgettable book.
Rating:
Summary: None of my friends are lukewarm about this book
Review: This book is clearly not to everyone's taste: friends of mine have been either enchanted or completely baffled by it. It is poetry masquerading as prose. I don't relate to the cities as being places, but more as states of mind, or maybe metaphysical states. This is perhaps why the cities seem so magical. If your're even slightly intrigued, give it a look. If you aren't going to like it, you'll know in about one minute.
Rating:
Summary: Nervewrackinly Hypnotic
Review: I took a college class recently which featured this book. I found the concept behind this book original, clever, and intelligent. A number of reviewers here have used the word "pretentious," but I don't see it as such at all. I will warn you now however, that if you are looking for a plot, you won't find one in this book. But the story that nevertheless unfolds in you mind, is indescribable. The backdrop for the story is an imaginary Marco Polo telling an eqully imaginary Kublai Kahn about all of the wondrous cities he has visited in his travels across the known world... but what the reader gets is far from "known." Instead, through Polo's vivid descriptions, Calvino takes you on a journey through a number of mythical cities, each more fantastic and surreal than the last. Slowly the reader comes to understand that the cities Polo describes, do not per-se exist in reality, but in his imagination and dreams. Time, we find, has no meaning to these characters who we find later are as mythical as the cities that they describe. In summary, Calvino tells a hypnotic and poetic story with his imaginative depictions of these fantasy cities. The book is pure imagination, with no plot to get in the way. It will give your imagination a well-needed workout. It is different than your average novel, and it will certainly have an acquired taste to it, but if you are willing to try, you will not be disappointed. If you enjoy this book, I would also recommend Lightman's "Einstein's Dreams," which is similar in style, just as imaginative, and twice as good!
Rating:
Summary: Can I give this SIX stars?
Review: I love this book. It taught me to see beyond the external appearance of cities and to look for the spirit behind things. Maybe that sounds a bit pretentious, but Calvino wrote a book that described dozens of imaginary cities in terms of what really makes them tick: cities peopled by the dead, a city that followed the design of the heavens with horrid results, a city that hangs from ropes stretched out across the abyss, a city where one is always old, a city designed to trap a woman seen in a dream, a city that can never be arrived at (one can never make it through the suburbs) and so on. It is a marvellous "travel book": one wishes that all travel guides arrived at this degree of subtleity and understanding rather than getting bogged down in mere descriptions of shops and hotels. A bittersweet touch is added when Marco Polo (who is the book's narrator) explains that, rather than describe the cities of the Chinese Empire, he has always spoken of his native Venice. Our hometown is always implicit in every city we see or describe, because that is our real standard of measure. I hope this review makes sense to other people. This book is hard to describe, but a marvel to read.
Rating:
Summary: Telling of humanitarian cities
Review: The book explores many different view points of a city. The author builds the city from scratch as he describes the city, but then leaves the city standing or demolished at the end. His use of two characters who comtemplate the tales of the cities is very unique. The conversations that the characters are engaged in are very profound and can be related to the reader. It seems as though the reader is invited into the conversations of the two characters.
Rating:
Summary: WOW! Cities of the imagination...
Review: In this slight book I found poetry, philosophical discourse, the stakes to a game of chess, and one of the finest last lines to a novel: "...seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." A beautiful affirmation of humanity! This novel abounds with thoughtful and deep-inside-wrenching remarks, interlaced with poetic descriptions of countless imaginary cities that live and breath the characteristics of the all-too-real cities of the world today. The progression of city-experiences in this novel reminded me a little of the snapshot scenarios in Calvino's Marcovaldo. BUT, this book is still completely different! This book spurred my own imagination as Marco Polo's and Kublai Kahn's are intertwined within the covers. A wonder at many different levels and will be added to the very short list of books that I re-read every few years.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but not Calvino's best
Review: I had the good fortune to read "Invisible Cities" while in Venice and other parts of Northern Italy, where I felt like I was visiting many of the cities described in the book. This book is a tiny little gem collection, with descriptions of each city stretching your brain in a different direction. However, I do feel that some of the chapters are repetitive, particularly on the theme of cities that contain their opposites. For that, I have taken away one star in my review. It reminded me very much of Alan Lightman's book "Einstein's Dreams" which I would also recommend (he's no Calvino, but the format and brain-stretching are similar). My favorite Calvino book will forever remain "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler," which if you do not own you should immediately order a dozen copies and pass them out to everyone you know.
|
