Began reading this in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, and finally finished. It feels a bit silly rating a classic of the humanities on a five-star scale, so consider this a rating for the Wayne Rebhorn translation (2013), which was impressive. The footnotes and end notes were great for slang or turns of phrase, and the historical context never felt lacking. Overall it’s highly accessible, even for a non-academic audience.

I don’t recommend reading each story in succession like you would read a novel (ie like I did), unless you really want to get into it. For what it’s worth, here were some highlights.

1.2: A Jewish man converts to Catholicism. The church is so corrupt, he says, that it could only prosper by the hand of the one true God.

1.4: An abbot and a monk discover that they have been sleeping with the same woman, and they agree to keep it a secret. “But you can bet they brought her back again!”

2.2: A tale of justice that ends with a band of thieves kicking in the north wind.

3.1: A gardener at a convent pretends to be mute and sleeps around until he is exhausted and can’t keep up the act.

3.3: Lovers communicate by confessing to a dim-witted priest. “Father, tell that man not to come to my window this evening, or I don’t know what I’ll do.”

3.5: Yet another clever plan is hatched between lovers to disguise their communication.

3.6: In a dark room in a Turkish bath, one Ricciardo deceives a woman into thinking she is sleeping with her husband, when in fact she was sleeping with Ricciardo. Apparently it was romantic back then, but I’m pretty sure Ricciardo would be on a registry today.

3.10: A man teaches a woman how to put the devil back into hell—if by put the devil back into hell, you mean fix her kitchen sink. (I don’t want to spoil the details, but the innuendos in this one are pretty funny.)

Day 4 was a downer, although 4.5 might be worth reading if only for the background to the Keats poem The Pot of Basil.

Day 5 had some feel-good tales. Animal lovers are encouraged to avoid 5.9.

Day 6 was all about clever quips. If you read this, read them all.

Days 7 and 8: Stories about tricks wives play on their husbands, or that people play on one another. Most are love affairs. One (8.5) is just about pulling a judge’s pants down. Some gags really do stand the test of time.

9.2: An abbess’s affair comes to light when, thinking she donned her headpiece, she actually put her lover’s trousers on her head.

Day 9 or 10: Somewhere in here is a tale about a priest who claims priests are better lovers because they have more water stored in the millpond. Boccaccio uses this innuendo more than once.

There are more, but no one is paying me to write this. Happy reading.