![](https://visualisingideas.edublogs.org/files/2020/10/invisible_man.jpg)
Naomi’s Photos
Both of the following books were written by Italian authors and both are short books, printed in a small format – 162 pages / 203 pages.
Naturally, I assumed I would be reading each one quite quickly, especially as we’ve been on lockdown.
I was mistaken.
“Invisible Cities” by Calvino is a book that I had to read very slowly. In fact, I couldn’t read more than a few pages at a time. The book isn’t really a “book” in the usual sense, there’s no real story line – but rather a “procession” of very rich descriptions of more than 50 “invisible cities”. All these cities are considered to be the many faces of Venice.
After reading a description I had to stop and think – what did I just read? What was Calvino trying to say here?
Sometimes I was moved, and felt that a description was powerful, or lyrical. So many people live /work in a place and don’t really look at it – so much is being missed!
Sometimes I didn’t get the point of the description at all.
Sometimes I got annoyed that some descriptions were a bit repetitve.
I know it’s a strange thing to say, but I truly found the book to be too long. I wished it had been a series of blog posts which would send me a description of one “invisible city” a week to ponder. More than 50 such descriptions in short succession had me losing the ability to focus properly on them all.
![](https://visualisingideas.edublogs.org/files/2020/10/Burst-225x300.jpg)
Ties by Starnone
It is interesting to note that in Hebrew this book is called “Shoelaces”. I have no idea what the original title in Italian means but “ties” is a more of a “give- away” of a clever metaphor that the shoelaces represent in the book.
This is a book you don’t want to know too much about in advance as it has some surprising parts. It’s a story about a family in a crises, over years, and is told in different ways in the books several parts. I had the book pegged one way and then it became a little different.
One one hand, it held my interest and I read it (yes, much quicker than the previous one) all the way through gladly. On the other hand, I didn’t find the characters completely “convincing” and some of the story line didn’t make sense, or rather “ring true”.
Not sorry I read it though.