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The Black Death is ravaging Florence. The inescapable awareness of mortality has demolished all restraints on polite society, with shockingly lascivious behavior becoming common. To reduce their physical and moral risk, ten young people flee to the countryside. It is so boring there that they immediately decide to pass their time by telling stories. Each of them must tell one story every day, over a total of ten days, making up the vast majority of the book.
This was a fun, easy read, though a bit too slight of content for really extended listening. The stories range in length from brief anecdotes to fairly lengthy stories. None of them get as long winded as, say, The Knight's Tale. Overall it's a hornier book than Canterbury Tales -- basically every story is about someone who really wants to fuck -- but it doesn't get quite as crude. The tone is a lot more consistent than with Chaucer, reflecting the more homogeneous status of the narrators. Fewer of the stories seemed mean-spirited, but maybe that's wishful thinking. There is certainly no shortage of really ugly behavior in the stories.
While entirely readable, this classic story telling structure remains more suited to an oral tradition. A few stories read out at a time to a small audience would be ideal, instead of sitting down alone to read the whole thing straight through. Doing radio drama adaptations as a 100 episode podcast series would probably be the most faithful way for a modern audience to experience it. That would actually be a really fun project, if anyone's interested. Also, at the end of each story day, one of the framing characters sings a song. Making an album of those 10 songs with different artists for each would also be pretty cool!
This was a fun, easy read, though a bit too slight of content for really extended listening. The stories range in length from brief anecdotes to fairly lengthy stories. None of them get as long winded as, say, The Knight's Tale. Overall it's a hornier book than Canterbury Tales -- basically every story is about someone who really wants to fuck -- but it doesn't get quite as crude. The tone is a lot more consistent than with Chaucer, reflecting the more homogeneous status of the narrators. Fewer of the stories seemed mean-spirited, but maybe that's wishful thinking. There is certainly no shortage of really ugly behavior in the stories.
While entirely readable, this classic story telling structure remains more suited to an oral tradition. A few stories read out at a time to a small audience would be ideal, instead of sitting down alone to read the whole thing straight through. Doing radio drama adaptations as a 100 episode podcast series would probably be the most faithful way for a modern audience to experience it. That would actually be a really fun project, if anyone's interested. Also, at the end of each story day, one of the framing characters sings a song. Making an album of those 10 songs with different artists for each would also be pretty cool!