10 days, 100 stories

The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio (trans. G.H. McWilliam (Penguin 1972, orig. 13??)

It may have struck you that I've been reading a lot of lighter fare recently (although now that I have discovered Hart of Dixie on Netflix all my soapy attention may be placed there) but in addition to whatever other books have passed over my nightstand, since around Thanksgiving I've also been working through a "big book."

Yes, nothing says holiday season reading like a fourteenth-century collection of stories themed around a group of young people trying not to succumb to the Black Death. Wooooo!

And yet, I forgot for hundreds of pages at a time that plague lurked around every page of this book. In some respects, this may have been the lightest reading of all. Ten young folk (plus servants) set out from Florence to escape not only the disease itself, but the obsession with it that has struck everyone. To amuse themselves, they wander and frolic, sing and dance, eat... and tell stories. Each day, each member of the party shares a story. Ten days, ten people = one hundred tales.

Most days have a theme. And this is when you learn that Italy in the 1300s was a pretty rocking place. My lingering cold makes me too lazy to go through and count statistics, but stories generally involved one or more of the following: wives and husbands cheating on each other (usually wives); corrupt priests, nuns, or other members of the clergy; people scheming to steal and play tricks on one another; individuals pinballing wildly between extreme wealth and fortune and abject poverty. But really mainly sex. So much sex. And described in such hilariously euphemistic ways.

For the first several (3?) "days" I was utterly enthralled by this, and recounted each story to my indulgent boyfriend. But after a while, I grew accustomed to the return of these same topics, and the remaining days passed by in a strangely soothing rhythm. (This girl likes structure.)

A couple points. Just because I'm not going into the details of the stories doesn't mean that many of them weren't awfully enjoyable. (I have told the First Day, Second Story to probably 10 different people.) And just because it took over a month to get through the 830 pages doesn't mean it was dull or slogging. It was actually a surprisingly quick read. But with holiday stuff and my desire to jump around and experience other stories, it just got spread out across a longer period of time.  Anyway, recommended with more enthusiasm than I might have expected. Good work Boccaccio :)

Eat Pray Love

Elizabeth Gilbert's tale of her year exploring the above verbs in Italy, India, and Indonesia has been a book club favorite and enjoying a loooooooong run on the best-seller list. I am a self-styled iconoclast. If everyone else loves it, I am emphatically not interested. Until I am.

So I put it on my library hold list, and waited and waited. And then finally read it. Including reading almost the entire Italy section in one sitting after work and before a meeting. I was set to find it shallow, or silly, or obnoxiously wise. And it was those things, but it was also witty and ridiculous and honest and real. So thumbs up to Gilbert, who starts off extremely strong, and then even as it wanes in the second half, has established enough likability for the reader to see her through.

Enough. Some passages that made me smile:

David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me eve under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. [...] His wishdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of "Where are you going? What happened to us?
(Dating tip: Men LOVE this.)

I have to admit, I looked around when I read this, guilty, because there was a moment where I recognized this scenario a little too much. This next one though....

So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria da Michele, and these pies we have just ordered - one for each of us - are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she's having a metaphysical crisis about it, she's begging me, "Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm?"

I read that and wondered, how did Gilbert ever make it past Italy? But I guess I'm glad she did.