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Sep 09, 2011

Paquita Maria rated it:

This is the third book that I have attempted to write a response to this week, and failed. I think I am going through a very internal, sponge-like phase. To say that I haven't been going out much would be a ridiculous understatement. I hole up in my bed, finish a book, set it down and grab another almost instantly, comparing the smell of the old to that of the new, then diving straight in, surfacing only rarely for air. I haven't felt up to hammering down my feelings about these things that More...

16 comments like (28 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Shan rated it:

My attempt at a City -

Cities & Memory/Desire

Travelling west beneath the hooded peaks you will see, tangled in the great beard of the mountain, colossal figures of painted wood peering down from between the trees. There are signs of welcome and invitation. There are rides for the whole family. You know that soon you will be in the city.
In your mind it floats on a lily pad, riding a wave of whiteblue water that reflects a shower of meteors, and of course the city itse More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Apr 11, 2010

Δx Δp ≥ ½ ħ rated it:

"Tidak mudah untuk menjelaskan isi novel ini. Setiap usaha untuk melakukannya tampaknya hanya akan berakhir sia-sia. Bukan semata karena gambaran kota-kota magis dan surealis yang ada di dalamnya, tetapi juga karena keindahan puitisnya. Inilah novel dimana kemustahilan imajinasi bertemu dengan pasangan sempurnanya : kefasihan bercerita "

Itu kata endorsementnya.

Tadinya saya mengira bahwa pujian untuk buku ini terlampau berlebihan. Tapi begitu habis bab-bab awal, More...

54 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2010

Bram rated it:

Given the subject matter—um, descriptions of cities—I wasn’t expecting this book to affect me on such a personal, visceral level. But during the final city description and again in Marco Polo’s closing dialogue with Kublai Khan, I got serious chills. And to put that in perspective, I was finishing it outside (90+ degrees) George Bush Intercontinental Houston, or whatever the hell that airport’s called. Now this effect may have been compounded by the fact that I was also listening to the Conan More...

14 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 15, 2007

O'Donovan rated it:

Italo Calvino is one of those writers who is beloved by all of the friends whom I love most ... and whom I most want to impress.

So, as is inevitably the case, I sat down to read, because just owning the book is, apparently, not enough. Nothing was osmosing, no matter how long it sat on my nightstand. So.

I started reading it in a diner. I don't recommend this approach, but I think it's a testament to the book's beauty and Calvino's kind of, um, restrained giftedness that I More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Apr 02, 2011

Mon rated it:

Invisible Cities: A Parody

Now i shall tell of the city of Yendys, which is wonderful in this fashion: though set on an even coastal plane with mediocre breeze and timid weather, the houses and decorated sheds are of bricks and corrugated iron, connected to each other with quiet courtyards split by pairs, surrounded with exotic, tidy bush of ginormous flowers, man-sized tin water tanks, weather vanes and shinny Japanese vehicles parked on dark grey gravel street that glistens under th More...

4 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 01, 2008

Capitu rated it:

As a child I remember being mesmerized by a collection of fairy tales. I could read with proficiency for my age – maybe 6 or 7 – but much of the meaning escaped me, although I could sense, or guess, much of it. At the end, it did not matter, because I was enthralled by the images and language.

Invisible Cities took me back to that early reading experience. I felt lost at times, searching for the meaning when the surreal and exotic images made me drunk. There is a philosophical de More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2008

John rated it:

Membership in Goodreads has its requirements, and I'd have to turn in my badge if I didn't post something on the late-century grandmaster Calvino. INVISIBLE CITIES emerges as the one to celebrate, though he never wrote a loser, and I'd never have a library without COSMICOMICS or THE BARON IN THE TREES. Still, CITIES is the one that's laid out songlines across all the continents of reading. By some miracle of imagination, Calvino pulls off both a form no one had ever seen before and a structur More...

7 comments like (12 people liked it)

Aug 12, 2007

Matt rated it:

Perhaps my previous experiences with Calvino's writings led me to expect something different out of this book. Each short chapter certainly had plenty to make me think about, but after finishing the book as a whole I am having a hard time putting all of those thoughts together in a coherent way. I liked it. I really did. But I'm left more with a feeling of not having understood something very important from the whole 'story'...something Calvino wanted me to understand. Is it really ju More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 20, 2010

Hollis rated it:

I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this. The best way I can explain is that it is basically the literary equivalent of one of those MC Escher engravings. What amazed me about the book is that it is less than 150 pages in length. If any writer in the world today attempted a book as profound as this it would have to be 500 pages at least (with a further two volumes to make up a trilogy, if the writer is in the fantasy genre). Not that anyone could make something as profound as this More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2010

Keely rated it:

In writing, pretension is the act of pulling your hamstring while lifting your pen. It is that sudden, clear, and unfortunate. It should also be avoidable, but anyone gifted with a grain of brilliance is tempted to extend it as far as they can, like Donne's speck of dust stretched the length of the universe, one is left wondering whether it was more ludicrous or thought-provoking.

Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' is a series of descriptions of mythical, impossible cities told by Marco Pol More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2007

Jasen rated it:

I picked this up after becoming immersed in urban planning, reading and swearing allegiance to the small-footprint, high density environmental ethics school my philosophy professor Dan Holbrook, a rancher, had so disparaged. Calvino's fabulist take on cities stresses on how cities can be encountered and how the same city can be encountered in a multiplicity of ways. And that's the trick I'd later argue with Professor Holbrook: it's not the structure of cities necessarily undercutting any environ More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 13, 2007

Nick rated it:

Hidden cities, thin cities, cities and memory, cities and eyes, cities and the dead - this book is a collection of ruminations about them all, and they're all the same city.

Marco Polo is sitting with Kublai Kahn in the capital of Kahn's vast empire, they are contemplating the complexity of his conquered territory, and the italian traveler tells him these stories, poems, anecdotes, meditations. Each one is no more than 3 pages. They are gems you turn over in your mouth before you go More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2012

John rated it:

Calvino's upstart artists were interested in tearing down the barriers between forms of art, and in Invisible Cities he made a contribution by making prose as beautiful as poetry. Herein are a series of descriptions of cities, each focusing on one aspect (foliage, architecture, a city in the sky, a city underground, etc.). Many of these are no longer than a page, using the beauty of language and potent imagery to create beautiful and meaningful prose. Is the narrator (Marco Polo) making them all More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 28, 2009

Célia rated it:

Sinceramente, nem sei por onde começar a opinião deste livro. Aproveitei as mini-férias do Carnaval para o ler e dei a tarefa por concluída em algumas horas, tal foi a forma como fiquei hipnotizada com esta leitura.

Não é um livro muito fácil de descrever - a sinopse é, contudo, bastante elucidativa - ou de catalogar. Trata-se da colocação em palavras de uma imaginação prodigiosa. O livro não tem propriamente uma história, para além do facto de termos Marco Polo a falar de diversas ci More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 18, 2008

matthew rated it:

my father masqueraded as a jeweller, for some time, and he once showed me a small packet of blue-white paper - not unlike what one might find drugs in - containing diamonds. that's what this book is like. it's a played out metaphor, but both still awed me.

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 15, 2011

Argelia rated it:

“Las ciudades, como los sueños, están construidas de deseos y de miedos, aunque el hilo de su discurso sea secreto, sus reglas absurdas, sus perspectivas engañosas, y toda cosa esconda otra”. –I.Calvino

Las ciudades invisibles nos enfrena con un libro sumamente novedoso, pues bien podemos concebirlo como una novela divida en capítulos más bien independientes, o una serie de pequeños relatos unidos por la conversación entre Marco Polo y Kublai Kan; e incluso a un poema extenso dedicado a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 26, 2011

Alan rated it:

amazing, beautiful descriptions of imaginary cities, one like a spider's web, one on stilts etc. Exquisite prose.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2009

Joana rated it:

Excerto:

«Nada garante que Kublai Kan acredite em tudo o que diz Marco Polo ao descrever-lhe as cidades que visitou nas suas missões, mas a verdade é que o imperador dos tártaros continua a ouvir o jovem veneziano com maior atenção e curiosidade que qualquer outro enviado seu ou explorador...
Só nos relatos de Marco Polo, Kublai Kan conseguia discernir, através das muralhas e das torres destinadas a ruir, a filigrana de um desenho tão fino que escapasse ao roer das térmitas.»
More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 14, 2008

Brian rated it:

I just re-read this book after 5 or so years. What I had remembered about it was a cool book about Marco Polo describing Kublai Khan's empire to him by describing a long list of cities. After my first, brisk reading (it is a very short book) I didn't carry with me much else besides it being a cool "exercise."

Upon re-reading, I was blown away. This book has it All. Everything.

Every description of a city contains a great idea about memory, signs, interpretatio More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2008

Dfordoom rated it:

My favourite of Italo Calvino’s books. It consists of a series of impressionistic portraits of imaginary and possible cities described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. The cities are all fantastic flights of fantasy but they all represent some aspect of the idea of a city, or some way of looking at a city, or some way in which we think of cities or give names to our ideas of cities. They also represent ways of looking at human societies and life and death and the ways in which we comprehend the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 01, 2008

Lara rated it:

I keep a copy of this around to use in the way some use tarot cards, or willow sticks or coins to throw the Yi Ching. I can open this book to any page, in any mood, with a question or somtimes simply a hollow heart, and there will be the story I need. Each city, each description (whispered to Kublai Khan to tell him of the vastness of his empire, most of which he will neither ever see nor understand...) is like an answer unto itself, a little meditation on a possible life. Some are as long as More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 28, 2007

Karen rated it:

I bought it because i heard it had beautiful imagery and it transported your mind to other worlds etc...

Yes, it has gorgeous imagery, and yes, your mind is transported ~ kinda wanders too. It makes me wish I was high while i was reading it. The pace is dreamlike, which works perfectly for it, but you really must be in the right frame of mind. You have to be willing to put in the effort to extract meaning from it. On the second read I got more out of it ~ Calvino is supposed to be eso More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Bobby rated it:

Very interesting and original premise. This book consists of brief (2-3 pages long) "chapters" in which Marco Polo is describing to Kublai Khan all the various cities he has traveled to. And every few chapters, there is a similarly brief chapter of exchange between Polo and Khan. Thus on the surface this is primarily a descriptive book with not any real plot, character development etc. But halfway during the book, the exchange between Khan and Polo become rather philosophical and they More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 05, 2011

Lou rated it:

My first read from Calvino. He take you into dreamy landscapes and transports you to picturesque cities. Fifty-five prose pieces each describe a different fabulous city and each contains a conceptual or philosophical puzzle or enigma. Cities that change according to moods and others moulded on the memories of the citizens. I have changed rating to one more as the images are some how still locked in my psyche somehow.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2007

Erin rated it:

Invisible Cities has a nesting quality to it that I find deeply satisfying and incredibly beautiful. I almost feel like this book is more aptly classified as visual art that uses words as its medium. There's a lot of give and take in this book between the words and the reader. For instance, every chapter reminds me of a different aspect of Chicago, which I think is an extraordinairly visually inspiring city. For me, knowing Chicago enriches the text. This isn't a book one reads to escape... it's More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 13, 2008

Eleanor rated it:

Just as good as cosmicomics if not better. Calvino describes a fictional Marco Polo's conversations with Genghis Khan about the cities to which he's travelled, each a little more fantastic than the last, until the journeys become more metaphysical than even fantastic. The way he launches himself head first until a new world each chapter is entrancing, especially given that each chapter is no more than a few pages. A wonderful short meditation on the sense of 'place' as created by peoples desi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 22, 2011

Taimi added it

... Ihmeellinen mutta silti kovin tuttu Diomira, ikinuori Isidora, Dorothea jossa kohtalo on valmiiksi kirjattu, maailmaa nähnyt Zaira, halukas Anasasia, (sala)merkkien taakse hukkuva Tamara, poiskuivunu Zora, helpotuksen tarjoava Despina, kuumeinen Zirma, virkistävä Isaura...

Tsingis-kaanin pojanpoika, suurkaani Kublai kuuntelee Marco Polon kertomuksia valtakunnastaan. Kommunikaatio on haastavaa, sillä Marco Polo ei puhu Idän kieliä. Hän näyttää esineitä, elehtii, näyttelee. Silti Ku More...

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Feb 12, 2009

Brian rated it:

Some readers report that if you take a hard right at the third shelf past the study carrels you'll find Invisible Cities -- a tome, they report unanimously, of 165 pages translated from the Italian.

The bibliophile wonders, though, at the diversity of these reports in other respects. Some readers recall Invisible Cities as a novel, others as a poem in free verse; still others insist that it is both. The book is most comparable to Gulliver's Travels, say some readers; no, reply other More...

0 comments like

Jan 30, 2012

Vivliorasis rated it:

The City is a human creation, but the Citizen is the creation of the City.

But, what is a City?

Is it a womb, a structure, a name, an architectural conception (or misconception), a composite of impressions, an organism, a maze, a common ground, a melting pot, a market, a palimpsest, 'a constantly changing pastiche of associations and experiences', a context, a sum or a cluster of neighborhoods, a hive, a flee, a pattern, a function, a network, a modus vivendi, a settlemen More...

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