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What Members Thought
3.5 stars really. I liked the conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan the best. For me, some of the city descriptions were better than others, or at least brought me along with the author in his dream of the city.
I was lucky enough to teach a lesson on Marco Polo this year when I was a longterm substitute teacher. That prompted me to read this book, and I found it fantastical, charming, intriguing... I really loved the way Calvino told this story.
The whole book is just the description of one imaginary city after another, with a frame story about Marco Polo describing his travels to Kublai Khan. It is quietly brilliant in the varied and insightful descriptions of the cities, revealing fundamental truths about the human existence, and I believe this is a book one needs to read again and again in order to fully appreciate the complexity. Although it is a short book it did take me most of the month to read, since I kept loosing interest and
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Usually, I want everyone to know about a good book. I have no idea why, but this is one of those books that I don't want other people to know about. It is too good. Too rich. Too astonishing. I want it all to myself? How does that make sense? I don't want people to try this book and then reject it as boring, maybe? I want to keep it safe. I want to discover it again and read a single chapter, any chapter, and not hear a critical voice in the background calling it pretentious.
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Oct 22, 2009
Nancy
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Sep 23, 2011
Kristen
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Oct 07, 2014
Navi
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review of another edition
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100-spec-fiction-in-translation
Jun 17, 2015
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Jim Townsend
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james
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Christian
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Aug 12, 2022
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