Sixteen pleasures

Many years ago our book club read the novel The sixteen pleasures by Robert Hellenga. Margot Harrington is a young American book conservator who goes to Florence, Italy as a "mud angel" to help with recovery after the 1966 flood of the Arno River. In a convent, she finds a rare 16th century book written by Pietro Aretino. All the known copies of the Sonetti lussuriosi (Lewd sonnets) were destroyed because of their pornographic nature. Margot restores the book and tries to decide what to do with her life. The travelers and art fans among us particularly enjoyed the novel. There are some memorable scenes of Margot's Italian love interest rescuing pieces of art. Refreshing to read about a man rushing to save a fresco instead of a damsel in distress!

I looked in Wikipedia to find out about the real Pietro Aretino. He is credited with inventing "modern literate pornography". I compared the articles about him in Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia appears to have the facts right, and they included some portraits by his friend Titian. Britannica said, "Aretino lived in a grand and dissolute style for the rest of his life." A Venetian happily-ever-after!

Wikipedia had hotlinks, such as this promising one: "[Aretino] is said to have died of suffocation from "laughing too much". This promising link leads to an article on Death from laughter, which includes a list of historical and modern people who died while laughing. The modern people were watching TV and movies, not reading a book, or I would have continued to follow this diverting chain of ideas for more book club ideas.

Wikipedia also mentioned that the composer Michael Nyman, who wrote the Piano movie score, set some of the sonnets to music. This is the kind of pop culture content for which Wikipedia is so useful.

As you read The Sixteen Pleasures, it's interesting to look on the internet for maps of Florence, images of frescoes, and information about the floods. And if you really engage with this book, Robert Hellenga returns to his characters in later novels.