“I’m working on a new problem: finding the value of n such that n plus everything else in life makes you feel happy.” Reading Cameron is an experience that everyone should have at least once in their life. In his writings he manages to describe the void that accumulates inside man, like the rings of a tree. A void that cannot be filled in any way, a solitude for which we are always alone in...
“He looked at his watch, trying to hurry up, to find the strength to get up. It was no use. Useless.” Giorgio Bassani returns to dig into the well of memories, in an ideal continuation of his past works, with the themes and places dearest to him: Ferrara and its surroundings, the racial laws, the character of the Italians, his high social position in a changing world with the potential danger of communists ready to...
“I know well that the weaker we are, the more we do harm ourself.” Open this book with its aggressive cover, with a black and white gaze, that stares at you and you glimpse a little the insolence of an unkind and unsolicited judgment, against you, the reader. Here, then you start reading and you understand that all that can be wrong is perhaps human judgment. Someone would say “and if this means stealing, only...
“It is not clear why, but as soon as the word “moral” comes into play, the clarity of thought becomes cloudy.” A book that could be deceiving in size (if someone were to think of being able to read it in a couple of hours) and title (American hallucinations have such a broad meaning!), but not in quality, which is high with peaks that are not very easy to scale; but after all, how could...
“He loved his mother deeply, but he was ashamed to show it. That’s why he was rebellious and disobedient.” We took a risk: deciding to read a book based on the cover, of which we had a superficial knowledge of the author. When we then saw that it was a book of short stories, not our favorite genre, we understood that the risk was complete. Yet, as often happens with texts with which we start...
“VENERDÌ RE-VERSO” “It was horribly clear that my life up to that point had been a mistake.” “There are books that should be prescribed in a pharmacy: read 5 pages a day. Therapeutic indications: relieves and reduces the pain of living (and immediately a young Leopardi appears to us intent on stealing the secrets of the female universe and, above all, of good humor). “I feel bad about my neck” reminded us of a...
“At some point it is easier to go to war than to return home.” Attention please. We are faced with a true narrative text, as has not happened to us for a long time, in which the story narrated, modern in many of its aspects, is combined with a dusty style (in a positive sense) typical of quality writing after the Second World War. As we like to specify, the text will last for years,...
“Democracy is exercised not only at the time of elections, but also through continuous confrontation between the majority and the opposition.” This is a book with a clear vision, written by one of the most well-known economists on the Italian landscape, and appreciated internationally. The text is divided into two parts, the first one in which Cottarelli describes his eight-month experience as senator of the republic, and the second one in which he tells the...
“I wonder how many of us live with unfounded fears that perhaps we have unconsciously grown fond of.” If the title of the book is true, then it is equally true that it is books like this that transform prisons into peninsulas. Land languages that come to light at low tide and facilitate communication between islanders and mainland inhabitants. The more texts like these are written and read, the more the strip of land will...
“They found his heart intact because his will was pure.” We find ourselves in front of the book with which we decided to open the third edition of the “June of books – 2024” exhibition in Milan, and which we had the opportunity to read and analyze with the writer himself in great detail. The young author Ceccherini, after having spoken about the monster of Florence in his first book, in this second work recounts...
