Book cover of The Story of My Life

Book description

Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, swashbuckler, poet, self-made gentleman, bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was not only the most notorious lover of the Western world, but a supreme story teller. He lived a life stranger than most fictions, and the tale of his own adventures is his most compelling story, and one…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Story of My Life as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This memoir of the world’s most prolific lover and traveler is one of the best descriptors of life in 18th-century Europe. Similar to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, this book is an immanently readable and occasionally embarrassing experience of being exposed to a man’s most private thoughts and, in a word, confessions.

The experiences of Casanova are fascinating, if problematic, by today’s standards. The degree to which sexual relationships between men and women have stayed the same (while changing profoundly in other ways) is stunning to witness in the story, which sees Casanova jumping from mistress to mistress, falling in and…

If you love The Story of My Life...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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