A book (liked by an editor of Posts)
During this time of year many lists of reading tips are published, a little to help make Christmas gifts, partly because many are on vacation and therefore are thought to have more time to read. It is not easy to find a sensible criterion for building these lists, because they are intended for a heterogeneous group of people: both those who read a lot and are updated on new releases, and those who read little and do not know where to start, either to those who do not read at all, and look for an idea for a appreciated gift. The only rule we set ourselves in the editorial office is that they are books – one per editor, among those that had recommended them – that we liked them, even if they were not published this year.
Francesco Costa
God save Texas by Lawrence Wright
You know this Going Clear, that famous and disturbing documentary of 2015 on Scientology? It is taken from a book written by Lawrence Wright. IS The Looming Tower, the television mini-series that recounts US intelligence operations and errors in the 1990s and its responsibilities in the facts that led to the September 11 attacks? It is taken from a book written by Lawrence Wright, The very tall towers, with which he won a Pulitzer prize. In short, Wright is one of the best and most appreciated American journalists in circulation, he writes for the New Yorker, and his new book, God save Texas, beautifully recounts the many facets and impetuous changes underway in one of the most important but also the most stereotyped American states (cowboys, oil, ranches, etc). Although it has always been considered a sort of distillate of the United States, or of miniature America, for some years more and more journalists and experts have considered Texas also a condensation of the America of the future: because of its particularly dynamic economy, which has known to diversify and become more and more independent of oil, and also of a population that becomes less and less white and increasingly progressive every year, in the face of a reduced but very bellicose conservative majority. Here you can read an excerpt. Give it to anyone planning a trip to the United States.
Arianna Cavallo
The Heavens by Sandra Newman
Since I finished it I have recommended it several times and I have never been able to convince my friends immediately that they are doubtful before the plot: it mixes time travels inside dreams, parallel universes, an island of pangolins, a sentimental story between the protagonist of the 21st century and William Shakespeare, a community of inconclusive artists who wants to save the world while New York falls towards September 11th. It is not a fantasy, dystopian novel, a metaphor for madness or a historical reconstruction but, as Laura Van Den Berg wrote on New York Times, is "a kind of chameleon, a strange hybrid full of beauty". Time is the protagonist but everything lives in a great present, and even Elizabethan England seems a neighboring country, only with people riding horses. After years of personal stories, especially in books written by women who talk about depression, abandonment, divorce, illness, motherhood, The Heavens it is a return of the narrative to the invention of the worlds, which absorb and make new lives live, as happens to the protagonist and as literature has always done. You can get an idea by reading a short passage published on Posts or as it begins in English, here.
Luca Misculin
If not now, when? by Primo Levi
If in the last few years you have found yourself thinking "what is the meaning of Zionism in the twenty-first century?" – ok, it's not exactly a very frequent question – If not now, when? by Primo Levi guarantees an excellent response. It tells the story of a group of Russian Jewish partisans trying to get away from the Eastern front during the last months of World War II. In Russia they could not return, given that anti-Semitism had reached alarming levels, and in Europe, well, in Europe there were still the Nazis. The obstacle course of the group describes well the precariousness and alienation that in those years was felt by millions of Jews who eventually chose to move to the Middle East, with all the difficulties of the case. The book was written in 1982 and obviously does not respond to very recent problems such as the drift of Israeli religious and nationalist right wing governments, but it certainly gives some tools to understand more.
Marta Impedovo
A life like many others by Hanya Yanagihara
It is a novel to give to those who do not let themselves be discouraged by long books (more than a thousand pages), and indeed wary of short books because "you do not have time to immerse yourself". It tells the story of a boy, Jude, who lives in New York in the 2000s. Jude is surrounded by friends, has a promising career and a traumatic past he cannot break free of and cannot deal with. It is a story of men, but told by a woman who does it in a new way. It speaks of the shame and guilt that persecutes the victims of violence and abuse, but it is above all a great story of love and friendship. It is one of those books that do not make you go to sleep and when you finish it you would immediately like another one. I'm still looking for it, I keep you updated.
Stefano Vizio
Confidence by Domenico Starnone
There is a protagonist seen and lopsided – a high school teacher from the Roman suburbs, in his forties, divided between his own intellectual ambitions, low self-esteem and a family that does not suit him much – and a premise less seen – a pact between lovers: we say a terrible secret to stay connected forever, to the limit of blackmail.
All the things in Starnone's book that we seem to have already read in a lot of recent novels are generally better written. Several pages are built so well that they give a little physical pleasure. And with the confidence box he manages to keep together a story that seems very familiar with an unexpectedly funny narrative tension. Then we discuss how it solves it in the end. It is the last novel I read that I liked, not what I liked most this year: that was it Ordinary people by Sally Rooney.
Giulia Siviero
The Guerrillas by Monique Wittig
Written fifty years ago, in Italy it was published for the first time in 1996 as a militant act by the collective "Lesbacce Incolte", and now by the association La Porta Terra di Donne, a community on the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. It is a self-production, so it is not in the library, but it can be requested and received at home. She is a dangerous book, as was Wittig: a lesbian writer, a materialist feminist (men and women are for her classes of sex linked to each other by a relationship of domination and it is necessary for every woman to assume a consciousness of class and get rid of the internalized mentality of oppression by rethinking from itself) and one of the most important exponents of the Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes. He was among those who placed a wreath on August 26, 1970 under the Arc de Triomphe for the one who was even more unknown than the unknown soldier: his wife.
Wittig is best known for his theoretical texts (The lesbian body is Heterosexual thinking), but was also, and perhaps above all, the author of literary and theatrical works. The Guerrillas is an epic fragmented poem and tells in a circular way, without beginning or end, the story of a war won by "elles" (the French equivalent of "they") against "ils" (the French equivalent of "they"). A ruthless war, described in a detailed and apocalyptic way in which, for "elles", the freedom to exist is at stake. "Elles" do not want to replace "ils", they do not want to take their world, their language and their images. But they want to create new relationships between themselves and the others, between themselves and the world, through a search for a collective sense that is creative and has a memory of itself.
Gabriele Gargantini
The substance of things by Mark Miodownik
It's a book a few years ago that I started reading because at Christmas the friend who loaned it to me a Christmas ago, maybe two, is back, so it's time to give it back too. It is written by a materials engineer who is often funny and always very clear in what he writes. Talk about different what's this – like steel, paper, chocolate, plastic, glass and graphite – and for each one he puts a consistent series of anecdotes, stories, curiosities and explanations. Every chapter, every thing, is however a story in itself, made in a different and always pleasant way. It reads quickly and is not at all difficult for those who, like me, know nothing about chemistry or material science, and also think they are not particularly clever in learning them. Now I find out that the sequel: liquids. I'll read that too.
Alessia Mutti
various
My year of rest and oblivion by Ottessa Moshfegh e A life like many others of Hanya Yanagihara are the two books that I liked the most this year, but I'm not sure they are readings to recommend for the holidays. The first one absorbs you completely (and in my case it made me want to stay still for a long time), the second is a torment of pain and misfortune, and both remain attached to each other for days. In the category instead of those books that make you a good company, I recently came across one of the first novels of the Nobel Prize for literature Doris Lessing: Jane Somers' diary. It's about a successful woman who lives in London working for a women's magazine: she is apparently incapable of managing her private life, choosing work as a refuge from the deaths and illnesses of her family, but changes thanks to her friendship with a woman more old woman (you can also listen on Storytel, where you can give a few months of rehearsal).
Bonus: All that I owe you. Letters to friends, a tiny and delightful little book that collects some letters that the writer Virginia Woolf wrote to her friends. If you are looking for a little thought for your favorite people, the title is a declaration of love, the dust jacket allows you to package the book as if it were an envelope to be sent and the book also has very few pages, so you can read it and underline the phrases that you they make you think of the friend you want to give it to.
Mario Macchioni
Sub master by Marco Omizzolo
Marco Omizzolo began to approach the Sikh community of the province of Latina in 2008, and since then has undertaken a long, complicated and precious field research that reaches today. The methodology of Omizzolo, who is a sociologist and journalist, is unique and has developed over the years investigating the phenomenon of "agromafie" and closely studying the Sikh Indians exploited in the fields of the agro pontino, around the cities of Sabaudia, Terracina , Fondi, Pontinia. As the years went by he managed to bring out hidden and disturbing aspects of the Italian food supply chain, talking to people, literally mixing with migrants, sleeping and eating with them and even working for three months in the fields to experience exploitation firsthand. After years of research he decided to publish the results in this book of just over 300 pages, released last November: written in a crude and direct way, he explicitly takes the parts of the exploited, making them visible, no longer anonymous figures and distant views of escaped by car along the greenhouses, but human beings. More than an academic research – the notes and bibliographical references are meager – it is a diary of a painful activist to read but indispensable to understand how a distorted capitalism can generate new forms of slavery.
Valentina Lovato
Cromorama by Riccardo Falcinelli
Cromorama it is an essay on colors: stuff for designers or art historians, one would think. Instead, it is a book that tells what colors have represented and meaning in human history, since we started mixing soils and powders when we turned them into data and codes. There are many interesting stories that will answer questions that you may never have had, like because the pencils are yellow; or that they were there waiting for an answer, like because we tend to link black to mourning, or who first started wearing purple. Probably after reading it you will seem to see more and more colors understand them better: that's exactly what will happen.
Davide Maria De Luca
Poverty Safari. Journey in the anger of my people by Darren McGarvey
If you are the type of person who reads books regularly, you probably have a very vague idea of how people like Darren McGarvey live: the losers of our society living on the periphery of globalization processes, plagued by chronic problems with alcohol, drugs, food and stress. In a word: the poor. McGarvey was one of them, but luck and talent helped him find a ransom even though he still bears the scars of that experience (and is not ashamed to talk about it with genuine and disarming frankness). Growing up in the difficult suburbs of Glasgow, telling his personal story, McGarvey actually tries to tell a universal story: that of poverty and what it means today, and what damage it produces, being afflicted by this condition. It is a particularly instructive story today that we wonder about the significance of the last UK elections. But it is a much broader and more useful lesson to remind us that there is a part of society subjected to trials and torments of which, too often, concentrated as we are on our small and large dramas, we tend to forget.
Ludovica Lugli
Secret life of the solitary doll by Jean Nathan
A perfect book to give to those who have a soft spot for: biographies of forgotten characters and / or of little conventional artists; stories of complex mother-daughter relationships (like the one between Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt and cousin told in Gray Gardens or in the eponymous film with Drew Barrymore); the selfies. Even for those who, seeing a black and white photograph of a doll being spanked by a teddy bear, would immediately like to learn more. It tells the life of Dare Wright, photographer and author of children's books that were bestsellers in the United States of the fifties and sixties. He died in 2001, alone, isolated and forgotten by everyone, like his books, after having spent his life in: looking for a lost brother; come to terms with an intrusive and despotic mother he could not do without; escape any sexual contact and take photographs in which she posed dressed as a princess or naked. If you are intrigued but not yet convinced, read this article in New Yorker.
Pietro Cabrio
Austerlitz of W.G. Sebald
It was first published in 2001, the year of the road accident in which its author, the German Winfried Georg Sebald, died. It has been talked about as a memorable and elegant book, or boring and endless. It is a text without chapters and paragraphs, interrupted only by photos without captions, used to reconstruct the protagonist's story, from rural Wales to an apartment in the center of Prague. In the middle there is a bit of everything, including long digressions on the architecture of railway stations, prisons and military forts. You can try it, read it during the holidays: at best it becomes an interesting book in its many anecdotes and engaging in the biographical part.
Emanuele Menietti
Shoot for the Moon by James Donovan
In July there was the fiftieth anniversary of the first landing, with the consequent binge of articles, documentaries and celebrations, but it was consumed quickly. For those who have remained with many curiosities or with a sense of incompleteness, there is the formidable Shoot for the Moon by James Donovan, the best book on Apollo 11 in recent years. Donovan has collected an enormous quantity of material and testimonies, distilling them in an accurate and compelling story. It is a book suitable both for those who have the curiosity to discover how it is that we left our planet to go to the Moon, and for those who already know a lot of things about the landing, but want to put them better in line and discover new details. The book has not yet been translated from English, but can be read easily. Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut who stayed in orbit around the Moon, also enjoyed a lot – waiting for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to do the business – becoming for a few hours the most lonely man in history. humanity.
If you didn't like any of these books, here is the list of recommended books from last year. Instead the gifts we have suggested to you in recent days are here. These are other lists of ideas for making thematic Christmas gifts:
– Gifts that cost less than 20 euros
– Gifts between 21 and 60 euros
– Gifts between 61 and 100 euros
– Gifts that are a little more sustainable
– Gifts for children between 6 and 10 years
– Gifts for children between 11 and 13 years old
Otherwise there are last year's lists and the gifts we suggested you in November:
20 ideas to get rid of the thought of Christmas presents in November
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Source link
https://www.ilpost.it/2019/12/16/regalo-natale-libri-redazione/
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