I am an anthropologist who became attached to Venice after spending time in Italian language school there and returning over and over, often staying for months. What tourists see is the superficial beauty of the city. But Venice is a place of incredible depth and complexity, both historically and today. During my many visits, I began to hear (on the street) and read (in museums) of the many inventions that happened in Venice. I soon started making a list and, with additional reading, this list grew to 220 inventions—such as quarantine and the paperback book—and realized how much we owe to Venice for how we navigate the world today.
Here you get McCarthy’s whit and her fine descriptions about living in Venice. Although her stay happened long ago, her stories about interacting with her landlord and other Venetians, and all the adjustments one must make when living in a water-bound city, ring true today as well.
A penetrating work of reportage on Venice. “Searching observations and astonishing comprehension of the Venetian taste and character” (New York Herald Tribune).
Like
many of Lovric’s novels, Venice features prominently in this book, too, when the
seven Harristown sisters, known as the Swiney Godivas, travel there to present
their peculiar stage show showcasing their extraordinarily long hair.
Their
story originates in Ireland and brings them to London as they scramble their
way out of poverty and try to find love. Lovric’s stories always include some
gothic, some grotesque, and some pure and enlivening love.
I was drawn into the
narrator Manticory’s hopes for a better future while also, at times, feeling
squeamish about the more unsavory lengths her sisters go to to find release
from their poverty and, later, their eldest sister’s authoritarian rule.
Venice
provides the backdrop for the dramatic denouement. Gruesome and gripping, but also
beautiful storytelling.
It is the age of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, when Europe burns with a passion for long-flowing locks. And when seven sisters, born into fatherless poverty in Ireland, grow up with hair cascading down their backs, to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognise their potential.
It begins with a singing and dancing septet, with Irish jigs kicked out in dusty church halls. But it is not the sisters' singing or their dancing that fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. And their hair will take dark-hearted…
Since 1996 when my first trip to Venice rearranged my interior life, I have been visiting the city and learning everything I can about it. Most of my reading led me to men’s history, but with some digging, I uncovered the stories of Venice’s inspired, undaunted, hardworking women. Their proto-feminism motivated me to share their stories with others in an attempt to redefine beauty. I’ve also created videos showing sites connected to these women’s lives, and I’ve written four books about Venetians, including extensive research into Giacomo Casanova and two anthologies celebrating Venetian life. Reading and writing about Venice helps me connect more deeply with my favorite city.
In prose that is engrossing and rich in color, culture, and voice, Dunant’s historical fiction novel incorporates stories of two of the women that I included in my own book.
The courtesan Fiammetta, loosely based on the life of Veronica Franco, and her healer La Draga, inspired by Elena Crusichi, pulled me into eighteenth-century Venice and its opportunities and dangers for enterprising women. Paired with reading Franco’s actual poems and letters, edited and translated by Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal, I developed a deep admiration and compassion for Franco and Crusichi during Venice’s heyday.
Dunant has again written a page turner that I read more than once.
My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment.
Thus begins In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant’s epic novel of life in Renaissance Italy. Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, with their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, head for Venice, the shimmering city born out of water to…
The Mediterranean is in my family’s history. My dad was a naval officer who worked in the sea in peace and war and took us to Malta when I was nine. I was entranced by the island’s history, by an evocative sensory world of sunlight, brilliant seas, and antiquity. I’ve been travelling in this sea ever since, including a spell living in Turkey, and delved deep into its past, its empires, and its maritime activity. I’m the author of three books on the subject: Constantinople: the Last Great Siege, Empires of the Sea, and Venice: City of Fortune.
Jan Morris, who writes as elegantly as anyone about Venice, conducts us on a historical cruise through its maritime empire – both a history and a travelogue. It’s a beguiling evocation of the Mediterranean that we all dream of. Venice at one time or another held Constantinople, Crete, Cyprus, the dotted islands of the Aegean and the coast of Dalmatia – an empire of forts, harbours, and naval bases, all badged with Venice’s corporate logo – the winged lion. In Morris’s hands it’s an invitation to sail immediately. Her book on Venice itself is excellent too.
For six centuries the Republic of Venice was a maritime empire, its sovereign power extending throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean - an empire of coasts, islands and isolated fortresses by which, as Wordsworth wrote, the mercantile Venetians 'held the gorgeous east in fee'.
Jan Morris reconstructs the whole of this glittering dominion in the form of a sea-voyage, travelling along the historic Venetian trade routes from Venice itself to Greece, Crete and Cyprus. It is a traveller's book, geographically arranged but wandering at will from the past to the present, evoking not only contemporary landscapes and sensations but also…
Thanks to formative experiences playing Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, I’ve long been obsessed with international true crime capers. There’s just something about the genre, and how it ties together colorful characters, audacious escapades, and fantastic locales, that sucks me in. As a longtime journalist, I’ve sought out and chronicled many narratives in this vein – from snowboarding bank robbers, to an expedition in search of the origins of the world’s most expensive coffee bean, to the wild story that led to my bookThe Curse of the Marquis de Sade. Here are my favorite nonfiction books on international capers, guaranteed to take readers on globetrotting adventures.
In 2006, John Berendt published a true crime caper every bit as serpentine and seductive as his iconic first book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil– but this time, he took aim at the quirks and secrets of Venice, Italy.
Exploring the mystery behind a terrible fire that consumed Venice’s historic opera house, Berendt immerses himself in the tale.
Reading it felt like settling into the iconic city and getting to know the wonderful characters who call it home.
"Funny, insightful, illuminating . . ." -The Boston Globe
Twelve years ago, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil exploded into a monumental success, residing a record-breaking four years on the New York Times bestseller list (longer than any work of fiction or nonfiction had before) and turning John Berendt into a household name. The City of Falling Angels is Berendt's first book since Midnight, and it immediately reminds one what all the fuss was about. Turning to the magic, mystery, and decadence of Venice, Berendt gradually reveals the truth behind a sensational…
I have written more than sixty novels, and during the writing of most of them I had a cat by my side. I have three—Mousefur, Firefur, and Peanut Butter. They are rescue cats and my daughter named them. I talk to them, but they only reply with meows. I’ve always fantasised about what it would be like to live with a talking cat, and how those conversations would go. I actually did write a science fiction story many years ago—Dreamer’s Cat—about a man whose sanity is guarded by an imaginary bobcat. I have asked my cats if I should write a sequel, but they just say ‘meow’.
This book features a calico cat who reminds me very much of my own cat, Peanut Butter. But Conrad the cat is a very special cat—he talks! And he helps retired police detective Lulu Lewis solve crimes. Lulu lives on a canal boat in Little Venice, which has always been a dream of mine. I gather this is the first in a series of Conrad the cat cosy crime mysteries, and I can’t wait for the next one!
The Cat Who Caught a Killer by L T Shearer is a charming cosy crime read for fans of Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club and S. J. Bennett's The Windsor Knot.
'Charming and original. This book is the cat's whiskers' - Anthony Horowitz, author of The Twist of a Knife
Meet Conrad. Conrad is a cat. You've never met a detective like him before.
Neither has Lulu Lewis, until he walks into her life one summer's day. Mourning the recent death of her husband, the former police detective had expected a gentle retirement, quietly enjoying life on her new…
I am an anthropologist who became attached to Venice after spending time in Italian language school there and returning over and over, often staying for months. What tourists see is the superficial beauty of the city. But Venice is a place of incredible depth and complexity, both historically and today. During my many visits, I began to hear (on the street) and read (in museums) of the many inventions that happened in Venice. I soon started making a list and, with additional reading, this list grew to 220 inventions—such as quarantine and the paperback book—and realized how much we owe to Venice for how we navigate the world today.
Venice is a Fish is the book to carry to Venice so that you can sit in a campo somewhere (or at a café with a spritz) and read it during your stay. A funny, fun, and informative book about Venice as it is now, as well as over its long history. Then you can follow in the book’s footsteps and go for a walk and get lost.
'Every year, hundreds of books on the city are published, but none resembles this one' - Independent
'This gem of a book offers practical advice but in a distinctly lyrical tone. If you are lucky enough to be going there, take Venice is a Fish and you will want for nothing' - Sunday Telegraph
Built on an inverted forest, paved with a tortoiseshell of boulders, Venice is a maze of tiny alleys, bridges and squares. Tiziano Scarpa wanders through the city, recounting the customs and secrets that only Venetians know. With everything from practical advice for aspiring Venetian lovers to…
Plus, Tracey's
2, and 7-year-old's favorite books.
Why did Tracey love this book?
I
really enjoy Donna Leon’s series about the Venice police detective, Guido
Brunetti, and am about to start her latest (no 32 in the series!).
Give Unto
Others is an enjoyable murder mystery story, but the aspects of these books
I most love are the characters and the setting. Leon makes you feel you are
wandering in and out of Venice bars and restaurants and jumping on and off
vaporetti and police launches with Brunetti. He navigates the city and the
social networks on the trail of clues. Leon’s lead character is intelligent,
compassionate, and humorous.
His interactions with colleagues and family feel
real and textured. Brunetti loves books, food, wine, his children, and, above
all, his wife, Paola, who is an English professor specialising in Henry James. The new book, So Shall You Reap, begins with an
amusing scene of Brunetti culling his bookshelves. I’m enjoying curling up…
Brunetti is forced to confront the price of loyalty, to his past and in his work, as a seemingly innocent request leads him into troubling waters
What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It’s a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give unto Others, Donna Leon’s splendid thirty-first installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series.
Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti’s mother, so he feels obliged to at…
I have always had a strong, long-lived interest in all things Italian (including Italian food and wine). I spent my third year of university at a campus in Rome and travelled all over Italy during my year there. I’ve been back to Italy as a tourist and researcher numerous times, as five of my ten award-winning novels are set there (in Venice, Rome, Cremona, etc.). I have many Italian friends and my most recent novel,The Artist and the Assassin, is being translated into Italian and will be published by Les Flaneurs Edizioni, an Italian publisher in Bari, Italy.
Another in Donna Leon’s series set in Venice with a focus on Commissario Guido Brunetti, a totally believable detective with all the skills any good detective would need to have while meeting up against all the difficulties any detective would encounter in a society (Italy) where the nature of bureaucracy is extremely problematic. So problematic that Brunetti is forced to take a break on a nearby island where he runs into other crimes and difficulties.
'When she's writing about her beloved Venice, Donna Leon can do no wrong. And Earthly Remains, her new mystery featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, is one of her best. It's also one of her saddest, dealing as it does with the seemingly unstoppable polluting of the great lagoon . . . Leon dares to try, once again earning the gratitude of her devoted readers.' New York Times
A New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Top Ten Crime Novel of 2017 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An Amazon Best Book of the Month (Mystery) __________________________________
Deborah Swift is one of my favourite authors, and The Fortune Keeper is the third book of her Renaissance series adventures.
The Venice setting will be new to most readers, as this is a world of danger and mystery where the people live in fear of the Inquisition. The heroine, Mia Caiozzi, develops from a naive but ambitious girl to a woman who is not afraid to risk her life to overcome intrigue and duplicity.
Count your nights by stars, not by shadows ~ Italian Proverb
Venice, Winter 1643
Mia Caiozzi is determined to discover her destiny by studying the science of astronomy. But her stepmother Giulia forbids her to engage in this dangerous occupation, fearing it will lead her into trouble. The ideas of Galileo are banned by the Inquisition, so Mia must study in secret.
Giulia insists Mia should live quietly out of public view. If not, it could threaten them all. Giulia's real name is Giulia Tofana, renowned for her poison Aqua Tofana, and she is in hiding from the Duke de…
