The World of Venice: Revised Edition

Rating:
Summary: A dreadful reading experience
Review: ... I read [this] book prior to a week-long trip to Venice. This book quite simply accomplished none of its objectives. It is a poor "guidebook" and is poorly written and uninteresting in terms of a travelogue--to quote Simon: "Abysmal with a capital A." The history and art of Venice are covered better in books from those genres. The only upside is that it is short. Yuck, what a waste of time. My advice is: get a novel about Venice if you like novels, a guidebook if you want that, an art book, or a history book. At least you'll get something out of those--this one tries all of these and fails. Actually, in terms of a travelogue, "Vendela in Venice" far surpassess any other Venice book I have seen. Although I originally bought it because it is considered a children's book, it is not dumbed down at all and adults will enjoy it...

Rating:
Summary: A dreadful reading experience
Review: ... I read [this] book prior to a week-long trip to Venice. This book quite simply accomplished none of its objectives. It is a poor "guidebook" and is poorly written and uninteresting in terms of a travelogue--to quote Simon: "Abysmal with a capital A." The history and art of Venice are covered better in books from those genres. The only upside is that it is short. Yuck, what a waste of time. My advice is: get a novel about Venice if you like novels, a guidebook if you want that, an art book, or a history book. At least you'll get something out of those--this one tries all of these and fails. Actually, in terms of a travelogue, "Vendela in Venice" far surpassess any other Venice book I have seen. Although I originally bought it because it is considered a children's book, it is not dumbed down at all and adults will enjoy it...

Rating:
Summary: A dreadful reading experience
Review: ... I read [this] book prior to a week-long trip to Venice. This book quite simply accomplished none of its objectives. It is a poor "guidebook" and is poorly written and uninteresting in terms of a travelogue--to quote Simon: "Abysmal with a capital A." The history and art of Venice are covered better in books from those genres. The only upside is that it is short. Yuck, what a waste of time. My advice is: get a novel about Venice if you like novels, a guidebook if you want that, an art book, or a history book. At least you'll get something out of those--this one tries all of these and fails. Actually, in terms of a travelogue, "Vendela in Venice" far surpassess any other Venice book I have seen. Although I originally bought it because it is considered a children's book, it is not dumbed down at all and adults will enjoy it...


Rating:
Summary: Not Morris's best
Review: Although I am an enormous fan of Morris's later works, this early study of Venice (originally published in England simply as VENICE) is just not up to the level of her later work. When it came out Morris hadn't yet mastered either her style or her level of tone: as a result, the work reads much too preciously, with far too many trivial examples to support her points, too much xenophobic snobbery aimed towards tourists (something Morris later worjked very hard *against* in her other works), and an experience of venice that doesn;t really seem to capture the city at all. When this book wasd written several other studies of Italian cities were coming out by older, more experienced writers, and it's useful to compare them with Morris's VENICE: Mary McCarthy's STONES OF FLORENCE and VENICE OBSERVED are much more readable, and Elizabeth Bowen's beautiful A TIME IN ROME captures the city in a much more recognizable way than Morris's now-dated study does. but this was a useful text for Morris to correct the immaturities of his style before he (later she) went on to master the genre and become its leading living practitioner.

Rating:
Summary: The definitive "must read" background book on Venice.
Review: This book (titled Venice in the UK) was first published in 1960 under the byline of James Morris, when its English author was a foreign correspondent living in Italy. The current edition's seamless blend of history, social commentary, and personal travel narrative make it essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Venice. - Durant Imboden, Venice for Visitors, http://govenice.miningco.co

Rating:
Summary: Venice After Venice
Review: This book is a sheer delight for any visitor who has been charmed by Venice and longs to go back. Not for the unitiated, this is not a travel book for those who have never been there. It assumes some knowledge of the city and often teases with references to locations and legends that are familiar to visitors of the Veneto but which can be maddeningly vague for the person who has never experienced the phantasmagoria that Venice can be. Beautifully written, it evokes the moods and majesty and, sometimes, historical horrors of the world's most fascinating city.

Rating:
Summary: Too much of a good thing
Review: You'll be fascinated by this book if you've never been to Venice and don't expect to ever go (you'll probably change your mind before getting very far into the book, though); if you haven't been yet but will go soon; or if you've already been there. In my own case, I read the book in preparation for a trip to "the Serenissima". Once I was there, I had the odd experience of feeling I knew the place intimately, even though I had never personally seen it, and I didn't know where anything was. I also enjoyed seeing the city and its monuments greatly, having been armed with scores of legends and anecdotes about them. And now that my trip is over, I'm anxious to re-read much of the book, so that I can compare my own experience of the city with Morris's.

Morris's is an intimate, thorough, and honest portrait of Venice. Although she is biased in favor of the city (she calls it "the most beautiful city on earth, only waiting to be admired", and she admitted in a reading I attended that it was her favorite of the dozens of cities she's written about), she describes in great detail the flaws and annoyances of the place. Her style of writing is magnificent and perfectly parallels the character of the city. She uses some vivid and very creative metaphors; one of my favorites was her description of an old painting as "an orgy of fleshy limbs and cherubs".

My main complaint about "The World of Venice" is that it's too thorough. Especially if you haven't been to the city, the endless lists of the "minor monuments" of the city, the countless fortress islands in the Venetian lagoon, and all of the Titians and Tintorettos to be found around the city, are tedious. At times I really had to make an effort to wade through the minutia.

Another disappointment is the book's method of describing the history of Venice. You learn the city's history in bits and pieces and in random chronological order through the anecdotes throughout the book. There is no overall view of the history of the place, and in general the book seems to assume that you already know it all anyway. I still recommend reading the book, but do a little reading elsewhere on Venetian history first.