I tried to read it at the height of the pandemic, inspired by the plague framing, and couldn't get into it. Might be time to give it another shot.
replyA great feature of The Decameron is that it's easy to read and the chapters are short and largely self contained. It's not one of those books that you need to be in the right head space for, and have a big chunk of time where you can sit down and dig in. I read The Decameron over 6 months or so in random little moments, a chapter sitting on the subway, a chapter during lunch, while laying in bed, etc.
replyReading it in Italian (my native language) is fascinating, as it's a weird mix of mostly modern Italian flexion and Latin sentence construction. It's incredibly taxing, enough so that I stopped after 70-ish stories, but it also makes it very clear that the whole thing was written 700 years ago.
replyThere's apparently a pretty amusing adaptation on Netflix as well.
replyIt's very good, although it focuses mainly on the framing device and not on the stories themselves. I can imagine if you're a fan of the original book, it might feel quite shallow in comparison, but as someone who never read the book, I really enjoyed it as a black comedy about bad people in bad times.
replyThe Netflix series is an "inspired by", not an adaptation. It does not have much in common with the original book other than the setting and the names of some of the characters.
replyI enjoyed it, and I absolutely loved Tanya Reynolds, who is hilarious. But Bocaccio's Decameron it is not.
I loved the Netflix adaptation. I ignorantly missed the part about it being a book and am so excited to dive into it.
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