Renata Bulva: O chlupaté Bertě

Renata Bulva is an interesting emerging Czech author. I listened to an interview with her and three of her short stories from the collection O chlupaté Bertě (2007).

Cento Anni della Nascita di Cesare Pavese

This is one of the last podcasts of Radio 3 dedicated to the hundred years since the birth of Cesare Pavese. In the most recent puntata professor Franco Ferrarotti, a friend of Cesare Pavese, reminded the audience that Pavese's moto was "Ripeness is all" (La maturita' e tutto).

History of Love

It seems that the July book for Readers Anonymous is very likely to be History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I just got it yesterday and am already enjoying it quite a bit.
Here is a review with interesting interview bits:

http://nymag.com/nymag/critics/books/11916/

A Man without a Country

This is a collection of interesting analytical essays by Kurt Vonnegut. One could classify them as a set of political commentary of a tired person whose inexhaustible sense of humor was put to the test in the recent years. In the end, Vonnegut still insists on the happiness of the moment in which we live. Enjoy life, no matter how difficult the current politics make it. No matter how hard it is, try to find humor in everything.

Saša Stanišić

"I come from a country that does not exist any more," says Alexander, the Bosnian protagonist of Saša Stanišić's debut novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone. More on Boldtype's site.

Sense and Sensiblility

Jane Austen again. Well, I am almost through this last one.

2008 Best Collection of Short Stories

The guest in the most recent episode of The New Letters on the Air was Jaimee Wriston Colbert. She read a couple of stories from her new book Dream Lives of Butterflies: Stories. Her collection of short stories won the 2008 Golden Award for Short Fiction (proper title?).

Life's a Beach

Life's a Beach is an easy and quite mindless read. It tells the story of two sisters, one of them, married and with three kids on the verge of her fifty-year birthday and the other one having trouble finding a relationship that lasts. The latter lives in an apartment above the garage in her parents house, a FROG - Finished Room Over the Garage. There are a lot of frogs and toads in this book. Even the jokes are froggy. It seems that Claire Cook had the idea of having the frog as an uniting symbol for her narrative. In the end of the book, Ginger, the protagonist, gets a one-foot tall Jazzy J Frog singing "What a Wonderful World" from her father as well as a miniature frog palace from her boyfriend, Noah. Ginger and Noah get together in the end to give Cook's novel the image of a happy-ending beach read.

Jane Austen's Lover

Hmmm - look at this.

Covent Garden

Clive Boursnell published a new book with his pictures from the market in Covent Garden taken in the last 35 years. The market will close June 21, 2008.
The Guardian's few photos.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier Clay

should be my next leisure read.

Christina Stead

This is a translation into Italian of Christina Stead's 1973 book The Little Hotel: A Novel, Il Piccolo Hotel. Una delle ultime "sophisticated comedies."
Un libro gradevole intelligente per una buona lettura.

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

I am being tortured......

I am done with it though. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy finally got married. I saw the BBC series and the 2005 movie as well.

I also read a very interesting article "Translated Passion in Pride and Prejudice" by Roberta Grandi from the Catholic University in Milan. There are several excellent points that Grandi makes which I'd like to remember. She is interested in the stylistic techniques and tropes in the novel and in the 2005 movie. Grandi looks at synecdoches and metonymies that are translated from the text to the film. She focuses on the eyes, the hands, and the technique of focalization as a metonymical device.

Petros Markaris: I Labirinti di Atene

I listened to an interview with the Italian translator, Andrea di Gregorio, of Petros Markaris.
Il grecoe e' "una lingua assolutamente volubile e in movimento. Se volessimo fare paragone tra il greco dell' oggi e l'italiano, dovremmo paragonarlo al italiano di Dante. Quando Dante la stessa parola la stcrve in quattro modi diversi e da quattro rimi diversi, la stessa cosa sucesse in greco di oggi. Per cui e' una lingua molto creativa che e' molto difficile da rendere in italiano. Qualcosa perdi. Perche' l'italiamo e' piu' strutturato, l'italiano e' piu' rigido nelle sue strutture."


Buona giallistica.
Paragone con Camillieri

I Labirinti di Atene
Athens, Capital of the Balkans

Giuseppe Pedriali

Giuseppe Pedriali has just written a book on the Italian athlete who took part in the London Marathon in the Olympic Games of 1908.

Diane Williams: new book

Diane William's new collection of stories is called It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature: A Novella and Stories. I was intrigued by her interview on the New Letters On the Air.

Persuasion

Jane Austen

This was a slow read. Austen's ability to delve into detail is admirable. The texture of the novel is built by a network of complicated social activities. Ann Elliot is a sad and reason-driven creature who is representative of the early 18 c. good-mannered females.

Mi sono perso a Genova

Un video dedicato ad un libro e ad una mostra di Maurizio Maggiani. Le fotografie sono di Maurizio Maggiani, Jacopo Benassi, Moreno Carbone.