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A review by gingerliss
The Travels Marco Polo by Marco Polo
3.0
This is one of those books that's quite impossible to rate the way I would rate a more modern day work of literature. The book is not particularly written well and is extremely repetitive. At the same time it is intertwined with wonderful little gems. At times it had me laughing out loud because of the viewpoint filled with the Western ideals at the time and the almost childlike innocence of Marco Polo or his scribe. Which is only innocence because now we know so much more than at the time this book was write. To give an example: Marco Polo thought rhinoceroses were unicorns and described them as being much more ugly than he had expected them to be. The repetition actually also made me laugh at times. But really when thinking about this books function, it wasn't meant to be read as a novel or one of Bill Bryson's travel companions. It was meant for other merchants/explorers who would be interested in the subjects so often repeated. The religion of the folk living in whichever town city or province, the popular wears in said areas, and so on and so forth. So I'm sure it passed for its function at the time. As a piece of history I thought it was really interesting. I probably wouldn't read it again, but there are certainly a few excerpts in there I would reread and possibly quote. The whole who the f wrote this book is also very interesting as the narrative changes throughout. Most of the time it's told as if someone else is telling Marco's story, but every now and again it's told from first person perspective. My personal opinion, I'm guessing he wrote it himself, but tried using third person to sound more interesting, but then every now and again slipped up and the ink and parchment was too expensive to redo so he just left it that way. Much like the moments he is about to tell us about something, but then realises, no wait... I forgot to tell you this, I'm going to tell you this first.
Soooo would I recommend?
If you are interested in history... Yes definitely.
If you are interested in literature... Also definitely.
If you dislike repetitiveness... Absolutely not...
If you are interested in the perspectives of an Italian on Medieval Asia... Definitely
If you are interested in literature but not so much the old stuff... Nope
If you want an easy read... Yeah... The language is super duper easy.. I was worried it was going to be really complicated and full of fancy old words, but honestly, most of this could have been written by an intelligent ten year old. (Leaving out anything sexual that is)
From that you should pretty much be able to decide.
I'm going to leave you with my favourite part of the book:
Marco describes a place where for a woman the more sexual partners you've had the more highly you are respected and the most wanted you will be as a wife. Now in this place Marco described that whenever there were outsiders visiting the people of the village would bring all their women and tell the strangers they could have their way with them for the night. These women received some kind of trinket around their neck for every sexual experience they had. Anyway Marco rounds off his description telling us that it is most certainly a wonderful place for a young man of 16-24 to visit (in other words but you get the gist). This I thought quite hilarious.
Soooo would I recommend?
If you are interested in history... Yes definitely.
If you are interested in literature... Also definitely.
If you dislike repetitiveness... Absolutely not...
If you are interested in the perspectives of an Italian on Medieval Asia... Definitely
If you are interested in literature but not so much the old stuff... Nope
If you want an easy read... Yeah... The language is super duper easy.. I was worried it was going to be really complicated and full of fancy old words, but honestly, most of this could have been written by an intelligent ten year old. (Leaving out anything sexual that is)
From that you should pretty much be able to decide.
I'm going to leave you with my favourite part of the book:
Marco describes a place where for a woman the more sexual partners you've had the more highly you are respected and the most wanted you will be as a wife. Now in this place Marco described that whenever there were outsiders visiting the people of the village would bring all their women and tell the strangers they could have their way with them for the night. These women received some kind of trinket around their neck for every sexual experience they had. Anyway Marco rounds off his description telling us that it is most certainly a wonderful place for a young man of 16-24 to visit (in other words but you get the gist). This I thought quite hilarious.