One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Has a book ever changed your life? People think I am crazy when I say this!

Well, I had  read this book the first time 15 years ago and I felt like I was not the same afterwards.
And this is exactly why I couldn't read it again for so long: I was scared to change the "memories", to overcome the feelings...how wrong I was!

Macondo, the imaginary place where the book is set, is a magic place, where feelings and emotions do not have boundaries, where everything is exaggerated in one sense or in the other. A place where love, guilt and passion are faces of the same coins.
No, I am not gonna tell you what is the book about, this you could easily find everywhere, I will just tell you to go to Macondo and try to stay there the longest you can, its loneliness will fill your days, the smell of banana trees will be with you for long, you will look at chestnut trees with sorrow and joy.
Macondo is the place where your emotions will sit under the shadow of a tree, while waiting for the next train, or the next plane to catch, but will you really dare and want to get it?

Remembering Márquez 

(Aracataca, 6 marzo 1927 – Città del Messico, 17 aprile 2014)

The Voice of the Violin: The Inspector Montalbano Mysteries by Andrea Camilleri

Have you have watched the (TV series): The Inspector Montalbano? It is a thriller series inspired by Camilleri's book. It is very nice, sharp and addicting. Said that, I had never read the book that inspired it, maybe 'cause I read so many thriller book when I was a teenager that I got saturated by them, but seriously, why had I not?

This book is so intense, addicting, full of suspense and, yes, also funny. Montalbano is not a normal inspector, he is "incazzuso" as we would say in slang, which cannot be really translated but means something like "prone to get pissed and annoyed". Every character in the book has his own distinct personality, that create growing interest in the book.

I recommend both the TV series and the book series!!!

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago

It is a bit difficult to review this book, my last intention is to talk about faith, religion and beliefs, but I think I cannot avoid it.

This is the "biography" of Jesus Christ, so forget the apostles, the priests and so on, and just concentrate on the version that probably Jesus would have liked to give of his life.
Think about that: one day the Holy Mary discover to be pregnant of a boy that is suppose to be the Son of God. As much faith as she can have, I think every person would have question the situation and be a bit scared. The boy, called Jesus, has an apparent normal life, till he discover he has some form of "powers", that people call miracles, but why? Why is he so special? And why has God chosen him to be his son?
In a book that face religion and beliefs you will find yourself wondering if the Good and the Bad aren't just two faces of the same coins, if faith can justify million of wrong things in this world and most of all if Jesus was happy of the life he was chosen for.
All of this with the distinct sarcastic style of Saramago, never disappointing.


I don't deny that having grown up in a catholic contest at times the book was a bit too pushy, describing intercourse between Mary and Joseph and also Jesus, and guess who?
 Nevertheless, I think such a book could bring more followers than the Gospel itself, 'cause it makes everyone more human and less divine.

Saramago, as usual, THANKS!

The Overcoat and the Nose by Nikolaj Gogol

How could I not read Gogol for so long? How, how, how?

Dostoevskij said "We are all born under Gogol's overcoat", and after reading him I can fully understand what he meant. Most of the writers were inspired by him, by his sarcasm, by his talking to the reader.
Maybe in this sense it was good I read him "later", so I could still appreciate the writers he inspired.

The strong idea of reading Gogol came after watching a great movie: The Namesake, adapted from a great book by Jhumpa Lahiri, in which the main character is called Gogol after the writer, for a circumstance that you should discover by reading the book or watching the movie. So after that I had a strong desire to read Gogol and understand why there was such a feeling toward this writer.

The writing is so sharp and somehow funny, a must read in everyone life!

Maus by Art Spiegelman

I finished this book weeks ago, but I was not ready to write a review. The punch in my stomach was still strong and bleeding; a book that you can only pretend to not have read to maybe try to forget it.
But let's start from the beginning. Maus (the German for "mouse") is a graphic novel, the main characters are indeed Mice and Cats, in an eternal fight for survival.
But soon you would forget about the identity of the characters and you will just be left with the "ass-holes vs innocent fight". That the book is about the Holocaust you will need just few pages to understand. The book is  actually a memoir of Vladek Spiegelman, the father of Art, a survivor of Auschwitz
You think it has been said already everything about it? Well, I personally never get tired of reading of such an absurd and WRONG period of our times, but, in general, this book will still tell you something you haven't found elsewhere.

The graphic makes the words stronger and more incisive, and the narrative will just tell you things without any filter. No imagination, no suggestions here are possible.The truth, nude and crude as it is.

I think this book is important for the new generations, that won't have the direct narrative from fathers and grandfathers, and that won't probably have that curiosity to understand a period too far from them. This is a good way to give the message and to keep the memory up for one of the worst and tragic period of our history.

The melancholy death of Oyster boy & other stories by Tim Burton

It happens like this, you fish through second hand books and one of them just pop out silently screaming to be bought. That's what happened here.

You go back home and read aloud what I like to define "bed stories for adults".
The stories are all so sweet and funny at the beginning, all in rhyme, which gives them a happy touch, then the laugh would immediately stop in your throat to give space to deep sorrow.




Creepy, creepy, creepy, but so addicting!!! A little treasure!

I will miss you Oyster Boy...

Stoner by John Williams

I would like to tell you something it was not already said about this book.Well, you will find all about the fact that it is a book where nothing happens, the simple story of a man who slowly become a professor. The average story of a man that lives his life without too many emotions and shaking events, but that for an unknown reason you would still love this book and would not be able to close it.
Hold on a second...Really? No 'cause I think in this books there are lots of things happening: there is a man that changes his designed destiny of farmer first and agrarian then by simply listening to a class on literature. I saw a man that fishes for love and even if he has been really unlucky, and yes, also at time very lazy, still accepts happiness when it crosses his way.
Many describe Stoner as a "stone", listless, indifferent, apathetic, a man that accepts everything that happens in his life without fighting. I saw, instead, a man that just saves energies for things he likes, that understood which are the flights worth fighting for, that looks for answers in his books rather than in people, that is able of very strong lasting feelings. Yes, mostly an unhappy, melancholic man, but able to find delight in small things.
A slow, introspective book for misanthropic minds.

           "The True, the Good, and the Beautiful. They’re just around the corner, in the next corridor; they’re in the next book, the one you haven’t read or in the next stack, the one you haven’t got to. But you’ll get there someday. And when you do—when you do"

P.S. It was years I wanted to read this book and finally I got it gifted from a person in a reading group on Anobii (btw feel free to add me here). A person that I don't know in the real life but that got the right book for me. I love the connection that can be created through books.