Rating: 
Summary: Basta Cosi
Review: Never have I read such a mean spirited book about the most beautiful city in the world. Half way through, I had to put it aside because I couldn't stand reading about the author's demands of her landlady. I have rented apartments in Italy and never, once, have I encountered anyone less than charming and helpful. This is not to say that travel memoirs are supposed to be happy, and delightful but a little restraint would have helped the reading experience. I have the impression that she was mostly miserable while she was there and if she was enthralled, it didn't show on the page. A much better Venice book is "A Thousand Days In Venice" written with great enthusiasm and a true love of the place. If you're going to live in Italy, you are not entitled to complain!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Sadly, I must concur with most of the other postings here. I bought this book with high hopes of losing myself in a few days' worth of, well, Venetian Dreaming. It just wasn't worth the effort.Travel memoirs are my favorite genre. Bill Bryson and Peter Mayle make me happy. But this book seemed too often to dwell on the "Important People" Ms. Weideger knew and how she knew them (sort of like Dominick Dunne without the payout at the end). After the few first chapters, I felt like I got it, already: 1. She has a hard time learning languages
2. She's spent 20 years with an Englishman who doesn't want to live in Venice
3. She makes it her goal to know Famous Smart People in order to get invitations to nice social events
4. Her landlady's a bit hard to deal with (although really, Ms. Weideger could have been a little more flexible). So basically, if you like to read lists of "I got invited here and I met so and so, who introduced me to so and so," this is the book for you. A previous reviewer hit it on the head -- a few basic guidebooks would have provided much of the background on Venice she spent two years uncovering (I mean that whole MOSE thing was a documentary NOVA produced in the late 80s!)
Rating:
Summary: qvetsch
Review: The leitmotif of the book is repeated complaints about the aurthor's struggles with the language, battles with her landlady, and minor nuisances of daily living. As if this weren't enough, she never misses an opportunity to dish out catty remarks about the people she meets. Her observations about them are restricted to their appearance and their apparent age (is she perhaps preoccupied with her own?). But she obviously has some good friends (cousins?) see reviewers who gave her max number of stars. I am almost finished with the book (50 more pages to go) and still cannot believe the editorial misjudgement that allowed to publish this piece of mediocrity. Well, anyting with the slightest hint of magical Venice in its title is deemed to be publication worthy in this brutally commercial age.
Rating:
Summary: How not to be popular in Venice....
Review: Venice is my favorite city, and I am always interested in the lives on those who have been fortunate enough to live there - sort of to "test drive" if I could do the same thing. But the author goes out of her way to alienate and offend so many people that I don't really think there's much to be learned from her.
Even the descriptions of Venice are so fraught with her insecurities, opinions and prejudices that you don't get a good sense of the beauty and wonder of the city. Just lengthy diatribes about her landlord, her computer, her apartment, her neighbors, her problems with this person and that person etc. etc.
Anybody fortunate enough to have the flexibility to live in a different city for a period of time should take a little bit of flexibility and a decent sense of humor with them. The author seems to lack both, and this makes the book very difficult to read without wincing.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible woman
Review: What a horrible woman. The author. Selfish. Self-centered. Self obsessed. In all my years of reading, I don' t think I can recall an author I hated at the end of their book. Angry? Yes. Disagreeed with? Yes. But this women ... I am speachless that someone would not have stopped her.
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