# The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

6 Hacker News commenters recommended The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for its short, self-contained stories that suit dipping in and out. The most common caveat is that it is taxing to read in long stretches.

## Why people recommend it

- Short, self-contained stories you can pick up anywhere (2 comments): "A great feature of The Decameron is that it's easy to read and the chapters are short and largely self contained." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49302893)) "because it's 100 short stories, you can pretty much pick it up anywhere, read a couple, then put it down again" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49866495))

## What people warn about

- Adaptation shares little with the original (1 comments): "It does not have much in common with the original book other than the setting and the names of some of the characters." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49302191))
- Taxing to read in long stretches (1 comments): "It's incredibly taxing, enough so that I stopped after 70-ish stories" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49303468))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Exhalation by Ted Chiang](https://hackerapproved.com/p/exhalation.md): 21 recommend
- [Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stories-of-your-life-and-others.md): 15 recommend
- [Valuable Humans in Transit by qntm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/valuable-humans-in-transit.md): 10 recommend
- [Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ficciones.md): 6 recommend
- [Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cosmicomics.md): 6 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/150408456X?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9781504084567) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio", https://hackerapproved.com/p/decameron/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).