Evocative and informative

More social history than guide book, Morris paints a timeless portrait of this unique city. Whether you’re actively planning a visit or just an armchair traveller it’s well worth a read.

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Unique love letter from a master

Love letter may be wrong, its almost a loving obituary, taking in to account the good the bad and the ugly.

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A must listen masterpiece

The definitive guide, and in truth a love letter, to Venice. Absolutely fantastic. The book transported me to La Serenissima and I learned so much. A must listen for anyone who likes Venice or indeed a planning guide on where to go while you are there.

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The beautiful vocabulary

I loved the fluent narration. I enjoyed all the factual information delivered in poetic phrases. The whole book is an absolute joy!!

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All parts of this amazing book are so beautiful.

What an amazing book! What a story or history of Venice. Love this book very much and want visit the city and read it there.
The narrator is very good, but the sound is a little echoey. It distracts from the story sometimes.

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Brilliantly narratef

Venice is a rich book, full of wonderful language. This audio book does it full justice with a narration that brings out the best in the writing.

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A book of lists

It's a shame that it was thought a good idea to update this book. It should have been left as a 1960s homage to Venice and its history The scope of the book is vast and complex so the odd tweaks that have been made sit uncomfortably with the rest. The book reflects the attitudes of the time it was written and there is a lot of racial stereotyping and a fair few patronising statements (hence 4 out of 5). Nevertheless it is an outstanding achievement and the narrator does it justice, managing to deliver the frequent and seemingly iterminable lists without running out of breath. I will admit to preferring Morris's Trieste as a book. This is definitely a Gormenghast castle of a book: large, rambling and full of unexpected things.

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Interesting but

This book is interesting but I would not recommend it to somebody new to Venice and its history. The book is broken into themes like “The Islands”, “The People”, etc. which makes it difficult to understand the development of Venice as a world power. It is largely based on the impressions of a rather knowledgeable lady about the city. It is puzzling why a guy was chosen to read this work. The book includes a few fun facts and humorous stories so can be interesting as an additional source of information.

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4 people found this helpful

Well informed but badly organised.

I love Audible. I've listened to some great history texts and I've learned so much. However, I'm sorry to say that Jan Morrs' Venice for all of its length has taught me very little.

I bought this as a history text, but really this text is more like a modern guide book with a big portion of history mixed in. This sounds fine, but the problem is that while there is content, it is so higgledy piggledy in its distribution that the information just gets tangled, mixed up and confused.

Just as frustrating is the style of the writing. This book is overwritten and, frankly, rather self indulgent. Don't get me wrong. Morris can write lovely, florid sentences, but there are so many of them here that when the information finally arrives, it takes you by surprise and you miss it.

As I listened, in frustration, I found myself thinking that perhaps this book would be more enjoyable to someone who already knows the city well. For me, however, a Venice virgin so to speak (ahem), something more focussed on content, and organised chronologically would have been far more rewarding.

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11 people found this helpful

Very dated

So many assumptions about the National and Regional characteristics of people that it’s hard to ignore.
Beautiful prose but just too many outdated and vaguely distressing comments for me.

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