45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Could be Worse, March 25, 2009
This review is from: Brunetti's Venice: Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective (Paperback)
I think you have to be a Brunetti fan to be interested in this book. If you are, you might want it, even though, imho, it's disappointing. Try to get it cheap on Amazon Marketplace sometime. I agree with the previous reviewer that the format isn't that great; disagree about the maps. The maps are very good, glad to have them. In my experience, it's pretty hard to get around in Venice with a regular tourist guide map; you need something very detailed. Otherwise you finally figure out where you are, you set out in a direction, and right away you're lost again.
The author, Toni Sepeda, says she's trying to accommodate both a reader who's actually in Venice and following the walks, and the one who's just home trying to follow Brunetti. As far as I can see, that doesn't work. Sepeda gives walking tours of Venice professionally, and basically she's just put together a bunch of walks that you could actually take, or she could take you on, in Venice, and then, since Brunetti's been to all these places, she can throw in a few references to different novels for each walk. That would perhaps work if you're actually in Venice physically following the walks.
If you're sitting in your living room in LA or London, though, this format doesn't let you follow Brunetti through a book, which is what I was hoping for, something like the Hornblower Companion. If it at least had an index.... but nooo. So you can't very well follow Brunetti through a book, although you could, I guess, at least use the maps. That's where an index would come in very handy. You can try looking up the various campi and rii and rive on Google Maps to find the right sestieri, then look in this book for a detailed view, but that's pretty cumbersome.
It might work if you're actually there; maybe I'll try it sometime. It doesn't work too well for the overseas reader, at least not for me. As far as just sitting at home and reading the book, it doesn't hold my interest very well. The brief references to the novels are just distracting and annoying. The introduction by Donna Leon is okay.
Pictures, not just maps, would have been great; it would have been great to have organized it around novels rather than geographical areas (although that wouldn't, perhaps, have worked too well for the person in Venice trying to follow along physically). At least an index!
I guess it's kind of okay, it's a good thing, better than nothing, interesting if you're a fan of Brunetti and La Serenissima, but it's pretty much a disappointment if you want to use it to follow Brunetti around, and it's just not that interesting a read. Of course I did have high expectations. It might actually be a great thing to have in Venice; maybe someone else can comment on that.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Walking Through Venice with Commissario Brunetti, July 3, 2009
This review is from: Brunetti's Venice: Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective (Paperback)
As a devoted fan of Commissario Brunetti I have long wished to have a street plan to follow him on his cases as well as his frequent stops at bars and restaurants, visits to family and other personal errands.
Toni Sepeda makes it alsmost possible to have a coffee or un ombra with my hero or to buy a bouquet of blue Irises at Bianacat to take home to Paola when he feels guilty or even when he simply wants to please her.
Sepeda frequently reminds us of the context in which certain episodes have occurred by citing shorts passages from Donna Leon's stories. The street plans help us to pinpoint the exact corner of Brunetti's own apartment building with those excruciating ninety-one steps to the top floor, up which every bottle of wine or water, not to mention all the groceries must be carried. Sepedia's knowledge of art history infuses the book to enhance Donna Leon's own interest in the mesmerizing beauty of the Venetian architectural, pictorial and sculptural heritage.
However, despite all the praise I would like to bestow on BRUNETTI'S VENICE, I must admit to being deeply disappointed by the fact that (1) there is no overall street plan of the entire city, and (2) that this book lacks an index. It is impossible to find any of the discussed places in Venice which one would like go back to after having quickly noted them in this volume or read in Donna Leon's 18 books. It is essential for a book of this sort to have an INDEX.
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28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brunetti's Venice, April 10, 2009
This review is from: Brunetti's Venice: Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective (Paperback)
This is a fascinating book. I just wish I had had it while I was reading all the Brunetti books, which I read with a guide book to Venice in one hand. It didn't have many of the important places like the Questura, and the Brunetti apartment or his favorite haunts, so it was fun to see where they all are, real and fictional. I recommend this book to all Donna Leon readers.
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