While looking for Gargantua and Pantagruel I found the Decameron and downloaded it, although it's not one of the 1001 Books (and why not?) It was readable, but again poorly edited - footnotes, for instance, appearing in the middle of the text when it would have been easy to move them to where they are referred to.
I've read the Decameron before and enjoyed reading it again. Like Aesop's Fables and Metamorphoses and the Thousand and One Nights, it's a collection of stories - this time the context is that seven young women and three young men who escape the plague by moving to a country house and entertaining themselves telling stories. Through the stories they tell we get a sense of their characters and the relationships between them.
And again, while the stories are entertaining (and frequently made me smile as I read), this book is just as interesting for the insight it gives into life in 14th century Italy.
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