Public Parks, Private Gardens by Colta Ives

Everything started before the arrival of French Revolution when there was still peace, when there was still the conception of the discovery of harmony and beauty also in a garden or park thanks also at the arrival of plants and flowers directly from the new world.

Poetic, dreaming this catalog Public Parks, Private Gardens by Colta Ives published by The Metropolitan Museum of New York and distributed by Yale University Press gives voice at another characteristic of Paris and in general France: parks and gardens and if you are in New York City from March 12 2018 to July 29th 2018 don't miss this wonderful, researched appointment and art exhibit.

Since King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette gardens have always been researched and respected because in grade to donate more beauty, grace at the various estates. 

French wealthy people have always been passionate of gardens, and if at first there was a french garden attitude, during the XVIII century people started to appreciate english garden as well.
French Revolution brought a  lot of poverty, abandoned houses and so gardens.

Only when situation returned to be back at a certain stability and normality people tried to return to their old houses or to buy that abandoned houses elaborating their gardens with new plants, flowers, although of course these ones were more modest gardens if compared to the ones of the past.

The various Emperors as you will read left a great mark because they adored green places.

The beauty of a garden? It is relaxation, a moment of escapism where it is possible to reestablish an harmonic contact with nature, flowers, plants.

More than other ones painters understood not just the poeticity of a beautiful countryside, but also the immense possibility that gardens, parks, with their vivacity of colors, their beauty, would have meant in term of painting.

A lot of painters from Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Degas, Delacroix, and many other Impressionists ones choosed the outside green and flowery world for giving and reporting a strong and serene representation of french reality becoming at the same time avid passionate of the art of gardening, as you will read thanks to an accurate life-story of these painters as well and not just of their artistic creations.

These painters loved to paint people while they were sat in parks, creating portraits in gardens,  focusing their attention on the so-called floral still-life genre, flowers in vase still alive and in general with, close to them, some fruits, or bread, biscuits for reporting an idea of a researched  casualty we can call it donating at the same time grace and presenting a precious, gentle aspect at a corner of a house.

This one is not just a book of art, but it is also a historical book so if you love France and you want to discover more, it's for you.
Enjoy the beauty and relaxation that this catalog brings with it thanks to the creations of immortal, genial painters and if you are in NYC don't miss this appointment!


I thank Yale Press for the physical copy of this catalog.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke A new translation by Robert Villain

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke A new translation by Robert Villain published by Oxford Classics is the only novel written by the estimated poet born in Prague on Dec 4 1875.

It's a fictional character this one of Malte Laurids Brigge although certain parts of the life of Rilke seems to resonate in various passages.
The story reconstructs the years spent by Malte in Denmark, although the book has been written by the fictional character in Paris, reconnecting fragments of an existence.

You mustn't imagine a novel projected "outside" with romantic descriptions of the french capital.

This one is a novel lived "inside"; substantially the protagonist could have lived also in a complete different location.
Rilke with this novel wants to let us see the intimist portrait of a life with its sufferance, departures, joyous moments.
It's the legacy sometimes I thought of a character who wants to leave at the posterity his thoughts regarding life, love, death, illness, phantoms, ghosts, poetry, books and much more because as adds the protagonist:

"...The memories themselves aren't what really matters. Only when they become part of our blood, every glance and gesture, nameless and no longer distinguishable from our very selves, only then can it happen that, in one of those rarest hours, the first word of a line of verse arises in their midst and emanates from them."

In a passage of the book the mother of the protagonist will say:

"Our lives passes so quickly and it seems to me that we're also distracted and preoccupied and don't pay proper attention when we pass on. As if a shooting star fell without being seen by anyone and no one made a wish. Never forget to make a wish...You should never give up wishing. I believe there is no such thing as fulfillment, but there are wishes, and they go on lasting, your whole lifetime, so that you couldn't wait long enough for them to be fulfilled even if you wanted to."

Malte and his ego with its intimacy, his personal memories, events and what remained of his existence the centrality of the book, giving a perspective of the beauty and dramaticity of a life with its contradictions, beauty and horrors.

This one is a translation, wonderful for fluidity and beauty.

I thank Oxford University Press for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Twitter doesn't work

I want to tell you the truth: these past days have been seriously stressing because I received a lot of e-mails and with dial-up if you experienced it once, you can understand maybe what it wants to say confirming the famous so-called GDPR from many many writers, publishing houses, magazines, newsmagazines etc. Your idea wanted to be more productive, while sometimes you were blocked because of this wagon of e-mails.

Latest  news: Twitter doesn't work anymore because of, probably, the new European GDPR. I can't verify for sure because of dial-up. Posting my pieces with FB means a lot of time sometimes more than a hour before that the system accepts to forward the e-mail
Yes: there's to become crazy!!!

I will try to open another Twitter account  in case one of these days if situation won't return to the normality.

The message appearing says:

 consent_violation_flow

If you know how to sort out this situation drop me some lines please.

Thanks for your attention.


Best

Anna Maria Polidori 

PS: Listening Frankie The Voice Sinatra searching for a relaxing mind and dear old times maybe never known but I am sure much more simple than these ones.

Readers' Liberation by Jonathan Rose

Readers' Liberation by Jonathan Rose a book published recently by Oxford Press treats the topic of reading in all its aspect, for the first time trying to classify what people read in the time, from the past to the present.

A beautiful trip in the New World, where from the East Coast, starting from a fertile intellectual city like Boston in Massachusetts to the rest of the USA it was more than felt the exigency once arrived to the USA for the pilgrims and the rest of people of reading, searching for culture, news in every possible place, and so the creations of libraries, thanks also to the philanthropic work of Matthew Carnegie, book clubs, good literature, shared books available for most people.

Columbia University introduced a course where students were invited to read a list of books for later discussing the thematic treated with a teacher. This, for developing a critical point of view, necessary for understand a complex reality. It was a successful experiment later implemented with an additional lists of new authors.

Jonathan Rose will then examines what people could read during the Last Second World War Conflict, which were the pro-Hitler writers and philosophers and which books could be read freely during that war.

There is to add that freedom of reading should be implied in every culture although there are still corners of the world where this privilege is not yet possible and where there is a worrying return of censorship and not just in terms of books but newsmagazines as well.

The 50s-60s were characterized in the USA by strong books, thanks to social thematic of great pregnancy.

If you are curious to discover it, you can find here the best books according to Malcom X like also the approach of black people regarding reading.

We will understand that Oprah Winfrey's mom not being a reader didn't understand the enthusiasm of her daughter for this old art. Later Oprah would have become one of the most influential ladies with her Oprah Book Club. She promotes books and authors she simply...likes.

We will immerse ourselves in the art of the birth of press, starting with the first newsmagazine seen at the horizon, published in Strasbourg in 1605, and later followed by UK, that didn't want to stay isolated and wanted to stay updated, although at first newsmagazines were plenty of curious, fantastic news mainly without any kind of truth.

The born of press in the USA, black and white taken in consideration like also what it meant at first the written word.

In the most remote past in fact nothing was more powerful than the oral word.
A monk living in a certain locality shared informations with another convent and other monks, for keeping them all updated about the latest current events in that certain locality and vice-versus. The importance of verbal words was immense if compared at the written one.

We will see the power of big corporations on newsmagazines, starting with Louis XIV, who understood the power and importance of press and the idea of reporting with great bravery when a war was won removing all the other news that didn't give great prestige to the immense reign he dominated and we will discover what it is today press.

A lot of suggestions for implementing reading also for poorest students, advice for teachers regarding a successful literary approach for their students like also new problematic born with the advent of the net: lack of attention, irritation the sensation of not being in grade to read anymore as in the past for adults ones and for the millennial the impossibility of reading sometimes long books.

Readers' Liberation traces a spectacular work and trust me when I tell you that you won't never put down this book because it is too interesting, very well done and explicative.
If you are a book lover you will simply fall in love for it.

In an age of confusion, in an age where there are no certainties, we know something for sure: that books are still the most beloved items of so many people, and culture continues to be a fundamental aspect of our society and that most people of all social classes, of all social extractions, and wherever they live try to cultivate as seriously as they can.


I thank so much Oxford University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Victorian Fairy Tales Edited by Michael Newton

Victorian Fairy Tales Edited by Michael Newton is a new book published by  Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press.
In this stunning book for you or for your children there is a very good selection of fairy-tales from the most beloved english and Irish authors with wonderful illustration.

The predominant importance of fairy-tales thanks to the Brothers Grimm moved also British and Irish writers to search for fairy-tales.

So, if in Ireland Lady Gregory helped by Yeats collected the fantastic and imaginary fairy-tales told by peasants during their long winter-evenings, British authors re-adapted old fairy-tales arrived directly from Italy centuries before and passed in other territories, re-reading that stories with different eyes and for a different audience.

A fairy-tale is for everyone, not just children. Children will read in it a behavior to maintain, a moment of escapism, a dream becoming  true, for adults it is a moral message.

Fairy-tales were for a niche of people during Victorian Times interested at the genre and writers writing fairy-tales couldn't expect a great audience, although thanks to the Brothers Grimm and a new model, more modern, more direct message and their adaptations for children, the genre became famous.

Some authors included in this book: E. Nesbit, Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang, Brothers Grimm, Andersen, Ruskin, William Makepeace Thackeray.

I thank Oxford Press for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Aspettando Monsieur Bellivier, or Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier by Britta Rostlund

This book by Britta Rostlund,  Aspettando Monsieur Bellivier, or Waiting for Monsieur Bellivier published by Marsilio Romanzi an italian publishing house is a captivating, wonderful entralling book. Trust me when I say you that you won't never put this book down once you will start to read it.
It is not a quick book, it knows the proper times. It filters life looking at it under many angles.
Times of life, of events, revelations, shocking news, funny stories.

While I was reading this book I thought that there were similarities with Waiting for Godot by Sam Beckett.

The metaphor of life...In that story protagonists wait for the arrival of  Godot, but we should read Godot as an event, beautiful mainly, come on. The arrival of someone is a novelty.
Just the expectation of breaking monotony with an arrival is great.
Pity that the protagonists won't be in grade to move anything for create this event, remaining in the same point, in the same place as bewitched by some strange supernatural force or just by life.

In this case it's the opposite. Monsieur Bellivier will be like a sort of bomb in the life of the two protagonists of this book and later he won't remain a ghost.

We all maybe have experienced a Monsieur Bellivier, an unknown person that we don't know, hidden somewhere and in grade where not to manipulate our existence to keep us interested to him/her.

He is a phantom, but in grade of producing a cause and an effect in the life of the person he wants to involves in his game.
You won't never see him if you are not lucky and sly enough;  sometimes he can remains an entity, other times someone you can give a face at.
Oh: the second option the best one, of course.

Helena Folasadu is a freelance journalist and she is sat in a café when a man asks her if, for case, she waits for Monsieur Bellivier.

No, Helena thinks, she doesn't wait for any monsieur Bellivier, but this last name intrigues her a lot; no, better it's the situation to be curious. Who is this man and who is monsieur Bellivier? Why that man seems to search for her?

She follows the man. She knows that it is irrational but she does it.
She discovers that Monsieur Bellivier is a phantom. She must forward for several weeks some e-mails she will receive everyday.
Payment is very good, why not adding other money to the one of her work, very well paid as reporter for various magazines? 
Helena doesn't live this story well.
It's unclear, and there is someone somewhere (Monsieur Bellivier)  moving a puppet: her.
Who is he?
What does this Monsieur Bellivier wants and first of all is Monsieur Bellivier a good person?
The reporter starts to think that maybe she is a cell of terror, someone working for a group of terrorists. Sometimes it happens. And if she would be a so-called cell without to know that? Terror!

The cover of the book is beautiful, and the reason for that bouquet of flowers is simple: at the end of every work-day the reporter receives a bouquet of flowers delivered by the receptionist.

Helena doesn't see it positively.
She could be potentially obserbed with an object on her hands.
A bouquet of flowers is visible. Maybe Monsieur Bellivier is following her? Is it that one a secret message for telling him that that specific person works for him? Why this gesture is repeated everyday?

When she goes out of her office and workplace thinking that these flowers are dirty she starts to present them to statues of writers, people she doesn't know and visiting the Jewish cemetery of the city she picks up a grave of a lady. This one will become the most interesting part of her story.

In her case monsieur Bellivier not only acted positively but created the humus for new contacts, a different vivacity in her life and new projects.

Mancebo is the second ring of this chain. He has a grocery store. You musn't imagine anything immense. Prices in his store are a bit more elevated than the ones you find in a supermarket. His life is repetitive and boring, after all.
He picks up new veggies and fruits everyday, he opens the grocery store, he sits in an affectionate stool from 30 years  at this part watching people when he doesn't sell items, then he returns upstairs where his beloved wife Fatima prepares the lunch for him. Then re-opens the grocery store, then it closes it, then he eats again and then he goes to bed.
This one is his life. He is an innocent man with a clear and honest life, a person who has always worked without to see what it was going on in his life and imagining that his life corresponds to the one of people close to him. He is an angelic creature in this sense, not just innocuous but pure under many aspects.

His old life will be interrupted forever by the arrival of Madame Cat, a strange lady. She will asks him a pleasure: an unusual one...
To investigate regarding a possible parallelal love-story of her husband. The husband lives close to his grocery store and his house. Hadn't he never noticed him? No, Mancebo has never noticed him; Mancebo hasn't never seen what it was under his eyes after all.

From that moment Mancebo will become a true, nice, funny investigator. I am more than sure that you will laugh a lot reading his adventures and his conclusions are pretty shocking.

I would want to tell you more, but I don't want to ruin you the pleasure of reading this book waiting for the next page and adventure of the various protagonists understanding that sometimes life is not the one we think that it is and that old sad facts can still be lived with a big sensation of discomfort.

It is one of the funniest, captivating but at the same time meditative books that I read this year and the proper synthesis of what life is: we all wait for Monsieur Bellivier, for a change, for an opportunity or just for Monsieur Bellivier, because he will be surely in grade to let us see clearly our reality.

Hoping to discover after all his/her real identity.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Star Song They Met Jesus: A Child's Life of Christ by Katheryn Maddox Haddad

Star Song They Met Jesus: A Child's Life of Christ is the first eBook of a long series of 8 eBooks written by the christian author Katheryn Maddox Haddad.
In this first eBook the author tells us the beautiful arrival of Jesus Christ in the world. It is not just a touching and well-explained eBook perfect for Christmas but also for this season (after all Christmas should be in our heart everyday isn't it true?)

You will discover more closely the characters of Mary, a teenager gifted by the arrival of a baby although still a virgin thanks to God's help, Joseph her future husband, a pure soul, Elizabeth the cousin of Maria an old lonely and sad lady gifted by God with the presence of a child when not anymore young. Other important elements of this tale the barn where Jesus Christ was born and then the arrival of shepherds because of the angelic presences, messengers in the world for spreading great news and a revolutionary element: the arrival of this little baby called Jesus in grade to mark history in a pretty great way.

Angels will always be close to all our protagonists announcing just beautiful arrivals: the pregnancy of Saint Mary, and then the birth of Jesus Christ to shepherds.

Other important portraits the one of Anna and Simeon, Zecharia and the Wise Men.

History and miracles, oppressive men, social difficult situations and reality walk together in this wonderful ebook.

Each chapter closes with some little big meditations for bettering ourselves.

I thank so much the author for this ebook.


Anna Maria Polidori

Modern Cider by Emma Christensen

Are you searching for a book plenty of informations about cider?
Your secret dream was the one to become a master in the art of making great apple cider and now you would want to realize this dream?
Do you want to discover the most modern recipes associated with cider?
Good: Modern Cider by Emma Christensen photography by Kelly Puleio is for all of you!

I picked up this book because I am apple lover and I was curious about cider.

This book will help you for obtain with joy a wonderful homemade cider thanks to the instructions given by the author, beautiful pictures starting from... Apples, what they are their main characterizations and specificities, how to mix them for obtain a good cider, tools you need  for an excellent result without forgetting the best recipes for wonderful drinks.

I thank NetGalley and Ten Speed Press for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Peggy Guggenheim The Shock of the Modern by Francine Prose

I am very enthusiastic by this book Peggy Guggenheim The Shock of the Modern by Francine Prose published by Yale Press and Jewish Lives. The author presents a vivacious book, a stunning biography, a vivid and fresh portrait of one of the most important icons of the last century.

What a woman Peggy Guggenheim was!
I confess that I knew the Guggenheim Museum but I hadn't never read anything relevant involving the founder.

So, the phrase of Peggy Guggenheim: "I am not an art collector. I am a museum" with me was more than perfect.

The life of Peggy Guggenheim has been incredible, true, sordid sometimes, yes,  but also pretty normal for the standard of a person like her according to my point of view.

In general a life of a creative is not like the typical life of a business man and doesn't follow the common trajectories that should have.

A real artist, someone with different visions won't never live a common life. It's sad because she will be "different" but in the scheme of life is perfect because in that way that creative soul won't be killed by monotony.

Not only the one of Peggy Guggenheim hasn't been at all a boring, sad, monotonous life but it was pervaded and moved by two main forces: sex of every kind with a lot of diversified partners and art.

These ones her two main additions. As the author remarks in several passages of the book she hasn't been a mother for her two children.

Peggy Guggenheim's dad died like many other people of the so-called elite during the inauguration trip of the Titanic,  while he was helping other people leaving them the available place in the lifeboat. A gentleman.
Guggenheim was incredibly wealthy and same was for Peggy although some friends thought that maybe her standard was less wealthy than the one of her dad.

Why Peggy started to fall in love for art? She was born in an environment where she could breath culture. Then thanks to a bookstore and later new trips to Europe she started to fall in love for art.

Contemporary art, in particular avant-garde, that one interested her a lot.

About men and women, oh wow! If you go for something like that in this detailed, intriguing, captivating book you will find incredible love-stories, some of them with tragic epilogues but all of them lived by Peggy Guggenheim with all herself.
She loved her men and later she would have loved  to remark them her richness and her being the first one, trying to keep her lovers and friends dependent financially, emotionally or erotically by her.
She could be terribly generous with some friends and ex-husband, Vail is an example, assisted for all the rest of his life in a monthly base, or pretty stingy.
If you were so lucky of being invited in one of her feasts in her palace Venier dei Leoni when she lived per decades in Venice, great! It was an honor for sure for you but you hadn't to imagine great food, champagne. There was the cheapest wine she could find and just some little food.
Peggy loved to keep all her money under control, her expenses, but in this sense I don't think that it was a Jewish treat. It's common, in artists, painters, catholic and of other religious confessions as well.
They're stingy for surviving or just for going on. In the case of Peggy Guggenheim, this lady although very rich was buying a lot of expensive art. She enjoyed social life, saving money for buying art.

Peggy Guggenheim was born for enjoying sexual pleasures,  trips, art, but also for leaving to the world an immense legacy: a real museum!

One of her lovers was a young Samuel Beckett Nobel Prize later, but in general Peggy loved to experience sexual relationship with all artists she interacted with and when tired of the man of that moment she tried to find a lover for him. She did the same for Vail her first husband.
She was generous in this sense, although sometimes it meant  a catastrophe. Most of her important relationship ended up with violent discussions and not just verbals.

Her children didn't exactly grow up in the most appropriate domestic atmosphere and Pegeen paid the highest price for all of it deciding one day of killing herself.

Perfection doesn't exist and if a person can be perfect in a field, in another can be "distracted."

Peggy Guggenheim was beauty?
In the cover of this book I don't see an ugly woman although Guggenheim's problem was her nose. She tried to fix the problem but she increased this fixation because plastic surgery was at the beginning. She was sad of not being beauty because most of her friends including Casati were beautiful women and it meant a lot in that social class. But after all although Peggy Guggenheim wasn't as beauty as the standard of that time required she had a lot of men and women, an adoring court, a lot of friends.
She was a lady of culture, she was a wealthy, someone who loved to take care of her friends, and someone in love for art. Artists loved her because they understood that she was serious in her intentions.
Before the arrival of the Second World War, Peggy escaped in the USA with her friends, ex husbands directed to the USA and bringing with her the art that in the while she had accumulated.

Then, after the creation of Art of this Century, the promotion of Jackson Pollock still an emerging artist, and many other ones, the idea of leaving the USA for a place in Europe where setting her museum. Forever.
But where?

Thanks to the Biennale she visited once to Venice, Peggy fell in love for that city and she ended up to create the museum in the Serenissima.

She spent in that beautiful italian city decades. Her guests and friends were Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Prince Philip and many other ones.

But, what will remain of her are not her excesses, are not her eccentricities, are not her family-problems but the words of a proprietor of a café on the edge of Campo Sant'Aponal, who synthesizes her life and legacy very well. When ms.Prose told him that she was in Venice because she was writing a book about Peggy Guggenheim that man's eyes became bright: "Oh, la Peggy!"
And he started to tell.
To tell to the writer that he was a young artist when he knew Peggy Guggenheim and that it was thanks to her if Italy discovered the Abstract Impressionism and if Venice considers Guggenheim a heroine because she completely changed the face of that city in better thanks to her museum. Close to Titians and Tintoretto people admires the beauty Peggy Guggenheim built during her tormented life. A tourbillon.
I love to imagine the owner of that café reading this book right now thanking the good inspiration that brought Peggy Guggenheim once to Venice.

Highly recommended.

I thank Yale Press and Jewish Lives for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Eating Eternity Food, Art and Literature in France by John Baxter

Paris: what a dream. Time ago I went to a store and I bought a bracelet because there was the Tour Eiffel, close to a turtle, a star and many other good omens."It's a symbol of trips, travels, bonne voyage" I said to that shop-girl.

Paris is sophisticated. Having some relatives close to the capital, each year they return for summer-time.
I remember that once I bought a monumental french cook book of one of the most beloved British authors because I wanted to impress them with some stunning recipes they know very well.

Eating Eternity Food, Art and Literature in France by John Baxter published by Museyon is the best example of a book that wants to present this capital in its vivacity, creating an interesting intersection of forces like lyric music, painting, photography, creativity in general that at the end will resonate thanks to a main voice: food.
And social life.

Paris is a capital in grade to feed not just stomachs, but minds, senses, creativity, expressivity, just...existing.

Food has always meant a lot in french culture although existed an incredible sad gap between rich people and poor people in the past centuries.
Paradoxically if now the so-called elite eats organically, try its best for maintaining a beauty and healthy body in the past monarchy didn't mind and while poor people ate mainly veggies, preserving their health, king and nobles at Versailles loved to drink warm chocolate, tea and champagne without to talk of food with more than 20 dishes per meal available.

Noblemen loved to hunting and it was a story mainly of sport, and outdoor activity; a chef mr. Vatel killed himself once the duc de Condé ordered him to follow a three-day feast, hunting included, created for celebrating the end of restoration of his chateau of Chantilly. Vatel was a wonderful chef. He trusted a lot himself, he had a great reputation and not any little or big error could be committed considering that the main guest was the king.

That chef, thinking that the fish wouldn't never arrived at destination in time killed himself.

Later Madame de Sevigne wrote: "...Monsier Le Duc burst into tears. You can imagine the disorder which such a terrible accident caused at this fete. And imagine that just as he was dying, the fish arrived!"

For french people food is this and the author is right: it's a story of life and death. If you have french friends, you know that and you can also understands paradoxically that chef.

Food has always been not just on the tables of poor and rich, with the introduction of potatoes thanks to Marie Antoinette but also in the mind of painters and creatives.
A moment, a suggestion, an idea of the way of living of the past presented to the immortality have always been the dream of painters inspired by Vermeer.
In this sense the art of Simeon Chardin influenced later Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso with his creations of Nature Morte.
Chardin was attracted not by rich people but poor ones, the servants, their work, their gestures while they were working and he presented us an age, a period, a moment, giving voice to the poorest ones, to the unknown no one will remember apart his canvases and his colors.
Being historical the book will also follow the french revolution and what it meant the capture of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette like also the history of the new months established and wanted by Robespierre. You will see that also this sanguinary revolutionary man thought that an homage to food was indispensable.
France is famous for his wine and an attentive analysis analyzes the old times where the monopoly of this art in the hands of monks and people of clergy.
France co-lives with more than 246 diversified variety of cheese for every taste and occasion.
Another great french addition started to be in modern times restaurants  attracting people like Victor Hugo, George Sand, Jean Cocteau, Napoleon.
Curious to know what Napoleon ate? Being a soldier with not too much time for eating  he was frugal in comparison to the french royal family and thanks to some gastritis problems he avoided heavy food.
Bread is an immense and wonderful voice for french people like also soup with an interesting evolution.
France has also known absinthe, described by Oscar Wilde in this way: "After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world."
Loved by intellectuals as James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Degas, Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Van Gogh, Proust and Satie, Toulouse-Lautrec developed a special cocktail he loved to bring with him wherever he went.
Artists discovered at the same time that the best thing to do was to try to portraying nature and so they went in the country for discover a different dimension and it was what Monet did.
You mustn't imagine that Monet went in a rural place all alone, and in a modest house. No. He was followed by a lot of people from a gardener to a sommelier. Reading you will discover his private habits, what he ate, what he loved, and same it will be with Matisse.
The author won't forget a special chapter where the french Riviera will be protagonist thanks to prestigious guests that in the past made the difference: Renoir, Picasso, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and if you are curious to discover where Sartre, Modigliani and many other intellectuals and painters spent their time during the coffee-time and where you could have met them (see at the voice Midnight in Paris the movie by Woody Allen) you are satisfied. At the end of the book the best suggestions for living a tremendous, unforgettable gastronomical experience in Paris.

Highly suggested this one is a book perfect for you in particular if you plan a trip to Paris, if you are a food-addicted or a culture-addicted, or a painting-addicted or if you are an art-addicted. Or if you love...Life.

Many thanks to Museyon for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Autumn: A novel (Seasonal Quartet) by Ali Smith

I admit it: I spent two years for reading this ebook by Ali Smith
Autumn: A novel (Seasonal Quartet).  My dad died more or less the period I was approved for reading this book and it was in Autumn. I didn't want to think at Autumn too much. Fallen leaves, the end of an existence.
But, apart it, Ali Smith's writing-style, her prose, at first didn't match with me.

Then I discovered a physical proof of: How to be Both. I opened it, I read some pages.Time passed by. You must find a connection with a writer. I found it.

Autumn is the story of Daniel Gluck 101 years old at first dead, later pretty sick and assisted, then vigorous intellectual old man.

In the numerous flashbacks we will discover the friendship, meetings and intellectual talks between  Elizabeth and this old man of 85 years old, with which she grew up intellectually with since she was 13 years old.
He will be a constant in her life and this friendship will also mean to her assistance when Dan will fall sick. 
Elizabeth starting to be friend with him when a teen-ager instilled in the mind of her mom some doubts regarding this weird friendship, but Elizabeth replied that everything is relative.
Elizabeth and mr.Gluck one day during a walk imagine...
Will you go to college asks him.
The girl replies yes because my mother went to college so this one will be the second generation. Why not?
He mentions a lot of topics...What would you want to study? Math, literature, physics, art...?
A college. A collage. And so let's try to imagine a collage.  Later that night Elizabeth thought that "She was chosen by the moment."
Her mother is skeptical. Too old for being a friend that man.

This book was written after the Brexit and here some considerations of the writer who portrays vividly what happened in UK: " All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country people, people felt they'd really lost....All across the country, people threatened other people. All across the country, people told people to leave. All across the country, the media was insane....All across the country, promises vanished. All across the country, social media did the job...All across the country, money money money money. All across the country, no money no money no money no money."

Daniel is a man plenty of culture and introduces Elizabeth in the still unknown world of books, music, talents of various genres. He is captivating and their talks are never banal.

One day Daniel will tell Elizabeth: "It is possible to be in love not with someone but with their eyes. I mean, with how eyes that aren't yours let you see where you are, who you are."

The hope in this life? According to Daniel: "That the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly."

In a conversation with the mother of Liz Daniel will confirms time travel is real. "We do it all the time. Moment to moment, minute to minute." But he will add something else, a constant about human nature: "Not to see what's happening right in front of our eyes."


Stunning. Beautiful. Sad, plenty of poetry.
You'll love it!

Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley for this ebook!

Anna Maria Polidori

Healing Berries 50 Wonderful Berries, and How to Use Them in Health-Giving Foods and Drinks by Kirsten Hartvig

Healing Berries 50 Wonderful Berries, and How to Use Them in Health-Giving Foods and Drinks by Kirsten Hartvig and published by Watkins an indispensable cookbook if you love, appreciate, eat and are an addicted of...berries.

Berries are famous for their rich nutrients and curative properties so each of us should consume in a daily base berries, fresh or put away for being eaten with tranquillity later.

As we will discover, each of us introduce a lot of berries in a daily-base.

One of the most common food we can find everywhere the author explains  berries meant to her more than two years of work, long walks in beautiful landscapes, a lot of recipes, cooking, baking before to seeing the realization of this book.

But..How can we describe berries?

"Berries are small juicy, edible fruits that are round or oval in shape, sweet to sour in taste, generally brightly colored and containing seeds or small stones" explains the author.

Do you know that strawberries classified like berries don't technically meet this criteria while bananas, cucumbers, apples! are botanically berries?

Amazing! Not only: we will also discover that tomatoes are berries like also persimmon and kiwi.

The author explains the rich mythology and magic behind berries and I am more than sure that discovering the secret meaning of berries in the past will keep all of you interested and fascinated as I was because most of the time we forget it but there is a secreat meaning in every food we ingest. This world is more magic than what we can think.

Plus: eating berries is healthy because for hunting them it's necessary to go out, into the wild and it means movement, energy, enthusiasm and fresh air.

Berries help against metabolic syndrome being rich of vitamins, amino acid, minerals.

How to bake, cook berries?

Recipes are pretty endless and yum all delicious!

Use berries for a healthy and delicious breakfast! Nothing more natural and good than to start with freshness adding berries to smoothies, desserts and wherever you think you can love them. It's up to you and your creativity and imagination in the kitchen.

The description of these 50 berries is detailed for later appreciating the most succulent section: the one about food, dishes and how to create masterpieces of taste for you and your family and friends.

From breakfast to snacks, passing through preserves and condiment without forget dessert and baking, drinks and tonics enjoy a delicious cook book (with, for every recipe, a nutrition profile) and keep it always close to you because the temptation of a good sweet delicious berries cake an irresistible one like a breakfast started with freshness, cure, love and attention for you and your loved ones.

I thank NetGalley for the ebook!


Anna Maria Polidori

I've Always Meant to Tell You Letters to Our Mothers An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers Edited by Constance Warloe

One of the most impressive books I have ever read dedicated to Mothers it's
I've Always Meant to Tell You Letters to Our Mothers An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers Edited by Constance Warloe and published years ago by Simon&Schuster.

I think that there is not another book more powerful than this one in grade to capture the strong, conflictual, beautiful relationship between a mother and a daughter.

A Wednesday I went to Umbertide and as I do often I stopped by at the second-hand book store of the ladies of Books for Dogs.
I didn't have in my mind anything specific.
I was there for something...precious and special.
I discovered this book and I felt that it was what I wanted to bring home.

Seventy-five daughters for an anthology, compiled with great love, devotion intention, patience.

Yes, we speak of intellectual daughters: most of them writers, and then reporters, poets, cartoonists, an universe of thinkers sometimes with mothers who were thinkers and writers as well.

Some of these names are known: Joyce Carol Oates, Lucile Adler, Natalie Goldberg but you will see...

Names and last names are not important in this book.
You won't buy this book because there is that certain author you love so badly, no.

It won't be that one the principal reason because you will want to read what these women experienced, what they meant to tell to their mothers.

You will buy this book for understand.
Understand if your relationship with your mother is similar to the one they are experiencing or they experienced and what it meant to them their mother and what their mother mean at the moment to them, adults and maybe mothers of other daughters.

These writers will be intellectually naked and sincere with their readers and their mother reporting with intensity, joy, sadness, frustration, happiness their memories.

Some of them will describe the life spent with their mothers, illness, problems, conflicts, additions, because sometimes it's difficult to be a daughter and to be a  mother and there is not a secret recipe for learning. There is who doesn't have memories of her mother apart in pictures because dead before to be in grade of...remembering.

Elizabeth Brundage writes: "I worry about being without you. I cannot imagine it. You are my mommy!"

Other ones will return with their memories at old times when their mother was still alive and what it meant that gift of life.

Tess Enroth writes: "After your death I often found myself composing letters to you, almost forgetting they would not be mailed or written. I'd have you with me in my dreams, too, and carry the illusion of your presence halfway through a busy morning."

Elegance, favorite meals, memories of a remote past kept closed jealously in boxes of letters or pictures,  fragment of moments.

Dawan Raffel: "When I was born no doctor was present. It was only you and me."

Carolyn See goes straight to the point: "Dear Ma! I've always meant to tell you that it didn't have to be this way; you made your own life by yourself..."

Shari Thurer thanks her mother: "I regard myself as tremendously fortunate to have you as my mother, with your remarkable capacity to both treasure my visits, and overlook the times I don't find time to visit." 

A diversified universe of intellectuals, united together for painting for every mom a wonderful portrait giving back to the readers in all its magnificence the most profound and true meaning of being a Mother and a Daughter.





Anna Maria Polidori

Mother's Day with Snowman Paul written by Yossi Lapid and illustrated by Joanna Pasek

Mother's Day with Snowman Paul written by Yossi Lapid and illustrated by Joanna Pasek another wonderful chapter of the adventures of Snowman Paul and Dan the kid and the perfect gift for your children!

This time Paul remarks to Dan the importance of having a mother.
An universal message for every kid, little or grown-ups of this world.

Paul's words are touching.

Sometimes children don't understand the meaning and importance of a mother and her loves for them.

She heals his kids when sick, she feeds his children, she does all her best for being a good mother and, first of all she is a mother.

A mother is someone special.

She presents the life to a baby, she wants to prove that continuity exists presenting to the world physically babies who, once adult can say: "Someone created me, loved me, helped me to become a good man or a good woman."
A mom is someone that when you say her: "thanks mom" is surprised that you pronounced these words because everything she does for you it's fruit of love.

Dan is surprised and he wants to try to discover if also Snowman Paul has a Mom.
Oh: Paul's Mother is the most universal one because it's Mother Earth. He was created by the sun, the wind, the clouds, the sea and Dan of course gave him corporeity.

Dan is thrilled and understands that they're brothers although Snowman Paul is constantly cold, he is a bit fat, white, his nose the one of a carrot, but what a tender, cute, smile he has!

This wonderful children's book is plenty of touching, beautiful dreaming illustrations and it is dedicated to all the Mother's of this World, including a Mother's Dolphin, an Elephant's Mother, a Mother's Bear because a mom is a mom.

Why buying this children's book to your children? Because it's important to celebrate and say thanks to Mothers for their love and support and because with simple words and tender illustrations this children's book will define with clarity and in a few words what it means the word: mom.

So let's celebrate! and Happy Mother's Day to everyone!

Highly suggested to everyone.

I thank the author for the ebook!

Anna Maria Polidori

Av'anti un'altro È proprio così facile scrivere? È proprio così facile fare il giornalista e restarci? L'eterna battaglia tra strafalcioni e consigli by Sandro Petrollini

Recently I discovered a book written by Sandro Petrollini called Av'anti un'altro È proprio così facile scrivere? È proprio così facile fare il giornalista e restarci? L'eterna battaglia tra strafalcioni e consigli published by Confraternita delle foglie.

It's a powerful book this one about our profession of reporters in Umbria, with our most hilarious errors, committed because we rush, because we don't pay sufficient attention, because after all we won't never be Hemingway and it's fine.

A reporter of an umbrian town, rural place, small city, writing for a little reality, a regional newsmagazine, the free press of his/her city probably won't never win the Pulitzer, but at the same time he/she will be a gem.
He/she won't be perfect but unique in her/his genre.

Last days an enthusiastic guy, sent me an e-mail: "Anna thanks, they published the piece about my art exhibit!"
I was writing a review. I was so glad to hearing from Alberto.
I replied.
"Did they publish the piece? I am so happy. Please send me the article I will post it on Twitter."
When I read it, oh! no....What the hell did I do? Poor Alberto, poor my readers! Did I mismatch plural with singular? I checked out the original file: horrible, yes, I did it, look...Oh God...After all these years? 15?
Bloody Hell!
I couldn't re-post on Twitter that piece :-(

Yes, it's difficult to be a good reporter and everytime it's a fight.

Interesting guide this one about the most common errors committed by us, how to avoid them and yes, I am writing this review in english because I can't do differently but I strongly hate when in an italian article I find english words.
I agree with the author.
I consider our language beautiful, musical and this fixation of putting english everywhere is absolutely out of place.
Let's remember that when we write we are read by young people but also by old ones and being understood by everyone is the goal that we  should reach.

Interviews, their importance and advices can be found in another section of this little great book.

At the end pills about journalism with quotes from the most important minds.

I leave you with some funny extracts from articles.







Highly recommended!

Anna Maria Polidori

Mouthfeel How Texture Makes Taste by Ole G.Mouritsen and Klaus Styrbaek translated and adapted by Mariela Johansen

Mouthfeel How Texture Makes Taste by Ole G.Mouritsen and Klaus Styrbaek translated and adapted by Mariela Johansen and published by Columbia University Press is more than a book about food: it's a technical, chemical, physical, biological history about "Mouthfeel."
What does Mouthfeel means?
Eating is an experience. A sensory, visual, taste, smell, surely a physical experience.
This book will explain clearly the areas involved by brain and mouth and nose in the eating process; which foods seems more warm than other ones, the various groups of food from meat to fish, including insects the new entry that the food industry would want to convince us to eat.

We will learn how much water there is in most of the important food we introduce in a daily base but also what means processed and synthetic food.

A chapter will treat the physical substance of food and when and how food can changes form, structure and texture.
We will discover pectin, gelatin, gums, and later the role played by enzyme on food texture and, yum! why chocolate melts in our mouth and much much more.

Yes this one is an academic book and if you want you will learn wagons of notions about food seeing under the most diversified and surprising perspectives, but remember: at the end you will see that this tome ends like all the other books treating food: all sat in a table surrounded by delicious pretzels, a wonderful Amy's Apple Pie, Caramelized Potatoes, Candied Seafood, Crispy Spice Cookies.
And before we mustn't forget pasta with the pesto recipe proposed by the authors and if you search for a recipe of ketchup you will find two! so you will learn how to make great homemade ketchup saving money and using good ingredients.
Recipes includes meat, fish, veggies prepared so that children love them :-) a lot of salads for all tastes, and much more.

When you will finish to read this book I am sure that your knowledge about a healthy diet will be clear like also the important process of "tasting" food without rush, because eating is one of the most intense delightful experiences of this world.

I can just wish you at this point: Bon Appetit!

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

I Figli del Mastro Vetraio or The Children of the Master Glass-Maker by Maria Gripe

I Figli del Mastro Vetraio or The Children of the Master Glass-Maker  is one of the most important books by Maria Gripe specialized in children's literature. Illustrations are by Harald Gripe husband of Maria. Published this April 18th by Iperborea, italian publishing house specialized in North European's literature, I know that you and your children will fall in love for this story.

It is an adorable book and once you will start to read it you will see that you won't be in grade anymore to put it down.

The powerful, tender  cover is a real attraction for everyone.
I brought with me this book is several places and people were interested, intrigued by the title and also by the book-cover, asking for  questions. A magnetic, magic book  in grade to capture the
attention of potential readers.

Alberto and Sofia lives in Penuria, Lack,  in a little modest house with their two children Pietro and Chiara, names wanted by Alberto for remarking his profession of glass-maker.

Chiara and Pietro still very little children when the story starts.

Alberto has a store where he sells his creations, although the most important moment of the year where to sell a lot is the big spring exhibition at Blekeryd.

Close to them on the top of a hill the little house of Svolazza Beltempo, Flutter GoodWeather and her loyal crow Sage. Sage lost one of his eyes, the one that sees negative facts and obscure situations and that's why lately he is constantly happy.
Svolazza BelTempo, Flutter GoodWeather, reads tarots, and she describes future also thanks to another passion: making beautiful carpets.

Once at the market/exhibition, Alberto sold a lot of items and thanks to it, he presented to his wife a beautiful ring. This ring was beauty but put Sofia in a terrible state because it was as if it "spoke" to her of some imminent disgrace.

Svolezza BelTempo, Flutter GoodWeather, doesn't predict the future at Sofia but...She reminds her that if for case she would have bought a certain ring and something bad would have happened and she would  have brought her that ring she would have helped her.


In a distant land there was a King with his Queen. The King was born rich, the Queen was very poor and became rich.
This King loved to fulfill every possible dream expressed by her Queen and people around him.
When the Queen desired for a son, he decided to "presenting" her not just a kid but two kids seen previously in the market: yes the children of Alberto and Sofia, Pietro and Chiara.
He kidnapped them.

Children of poor people.
This King thought that after all he would have made a great pleasure to that poor couple removing these two mouths from their house.

The King and the Queen lived in the City of Desires located in an island on the River of Forgotten Memories.

The King wanted to make happy the Queen. He didn't mind at all of Pietro and Chiara. The Queen if at first appreciated them later forgot them as if these two children two puppets or dolls, like the one the King and the Queen bought at the market at Sofia. A beauty, lifeless doll unable to feel any sentiment, pain or stress if treated bad or with indifference.

These children were not loved, but after all in that castle no one was loved and everyone profoundly unhappy for many reasons.

The King thought that every desire needed to be fulfilled and when he couldn't fulfill any desire he was sad.
The Queen was very sad because she lost the capacity of dreaming and expecting for something beauty in her life.
It's a beautiful dimension when you desire something and then with hard work, with casualty you see your dream realized.

Thanks to the immense richness of her husband what she wanted was realized immediately and if at first it was wonderful for her, born poor, with the time it was obsessively sad and boring and she started to be "destroyed" inside. Her husband destroyed her capacity of living, expecting, dreaming, desiring.

The Queen was "obliterated" by the impossibility of dreaming and  keeping intact the dream she was dreaming about.
Not always we can realize our dreams, it's known, but sometimes keeping them intact give them strength.

Pietro and Chiara didn't remember their past lives thanks to the enchantment caused by the River of the Forgotten Memories but they were like lost.

They desperately searched for other children, they desperately searched for someone in grade to love them although they didn't know that they were searching for life, for love, for normality for a family and for giving a sense to their poor sad existence because they were children.
They didn't find anyone.

They just saw other two children looking in some mirrors with which they interacted for a while. They smiled: they smiled back and so on but later that children became so pale, so sad, so desperate that they preferred to avoid their vision because too scaring. They didn't know that that ones were the reflections of themselves.

Life in a family where a disgrace fall changes completely and it is very well described in the book.

Two families in sufferance: the one of the King and the one of Alberto.

Sometimes it's difficult to remember the "before," because the after is  bitter and sadness, desperation too strong for permit again to see in the surface positive feelings or good expectations for the future. 

These protagonists lived in a sort of hallucinating state, in a never-ending sufferance that they accepted and embraced with resignation and without to fight.
They lived in an emotional cage where each of them was unhappy, sad but no one knew how to escape from it.

Alberto's creations were symptoms of his own sadness. His sadness puts in his creations appeared like tears. Sofia wanted to remember because she knew that someone once told her something of crucial, but...Who was?

In this passage of the book we can see the remembrance of the past, of happiest times, when brain was happy and focused and it was possible to enjoy every second of life. It's the ability of de-stress the
mind, of trying to see putting aside for some seconds sufferance, pain and desperation the happy past for a solution.
It's this work that must be done, it's this work that can permit to return to the surface.
It's leaving the land of sadness where Sofia fell in that can permits her to find the answers she needs but she needs to disconnects the new self created by sufferance, stress, pain, desperation, for re-connect her soul with the old Sofia. Sofia will be in grade to do that and then she will rush away for searching for the person in grade to give back them that happiness that someone stole to her and her husband.

Children in the while experienced the arrival of Nana a baby-sitter, someone disgusting, in grade to put in a terrible state all the Castle
from the Queen to the latest servant, reducing the two poor things in a miserable state.

In these passages the lack of love is analyzed very well and the result are unhappy people.

Toddlers didn't know anymore who they were, why they existed considering that people who took care of them were everyday different servants and there wasn't a dimension of familiarity. There was just a lot of cold and the sensation of being treated as objects.
Nana kept them under control every second.

Everyone once entered in that castle part of that game but everyone  unhappy and discontent for the life spent in that place.

Substantially if the children and the Nana removed, most of these problems would have been sorted out but that one of having children a desire of the Queen so they were integrant part of this game because a fulfilled desire.

At a superior level this story can be read like a metaphor of life. We meet along our way people that maybe we don't like but that constrict us to experience a lot of unhappiness with chains created by events after events. Sometimes it's difficult to unlock these mental prisons.

Because these ones lived by the protagonists of the story are mental prisons exactly as life can becomes.

Magic is in our life and the character of the little magical old man who sold the ring to Sofia means this: the profound connection between obscurity and light, escapism and captivity, happiness and unhappiness, joy and desperation.
He was the one who sold a part of the solution for sorting out for this family a big problem like this one: the disappearance of their two beloved children. Not only: that ring meant knowledge and vision of all the most obscure facts and situations.

You mustn't never think for a second that the King acted with cruelty against Alberto and Sofia.
No.
It was superficiality; it was the impossibility for the King of loving properly another human being.
If the King would have properly loved, knowing the meaning of this word, he wouldn't never have kidnapped that two children because he would have known what it would have meant. 

This book analyzes the condition of fatality and the condition of unhappiness as state of mind that we can't change but that creates a spiral of other endless problematics.

There is hope: hope thanks to the arrival of Svolazza Beltempo, Flutter GoodWeather. She will sort out a lot of problems and happiness will be back. For everyone.

It's a strong fairy-tale this one that I suggest not just at children, that will enjoy it, because they can read it without too much stress, but at adult people as well.
There is always a key in grade to re-open the door of happiness in every big sufferance.
There is.
It's important to remember it, to find it, and once discover what can bring back life in a family, in a person, acting for restore the beauty of the past, the present and the future.


Highly suggested to everyone!

I thank Iperborea for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori







 

Johnny Depp Photo Album Revised and Updated

Are you a fan of Johnny Depp and you are a so-called Depp-Head that can't resist too much distant from your favorite actor?
I have the book for you!
Johnny Depp Photo Album Revised and Updated is the best chance for you for, at the same time understand, follow Johnny's stunning career like also the man.
This beautiful photographic book is divided in  nine chapters: Johnny Depp at Home, Johnny Depp on the Big Screen, Johnny Depp & Tim Burton, Johnny Depp on the Spot, Johnny Depp Taking Risks, Johnny Depp Gonzo, Johnny Depp Papa, Johnny Depp on the High Seas and Johnny Depp on the Horizon.

What I love the most of this book are Johnny's quotes. Stunning.
A charismatic book of a charismatic man.

Highly suggested.

Anna Maria Polidori

Bobby Kennedy The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye

Who was Bobby Kennedy? A question that one that Larry Tye answers in  Bobby Kennedy The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye  thanks  to hundreds of interviews with people close at the brother of the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Optimist, beauty, idealist, Bobby Kennedy shared with his more famous and powerful brother John the same ideals for a better America, more equal, more right for everyone.
In the book we will also discover a more hidden Bobby Kennedy, and what it happened in the between, and in the creation of this liberal man through the history of the America of the 1950s.
A beautiful, sometimes tragic reconstruction of crucial years that changed the world forever.

If you love history and a beautiful precious book of a wonderful man part of a great dynasty with beautiful and visionary minds, this book is for you.


Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Poco and Moco are Twins by Jun Ichihara

Poco and Moco are Twins by Jun Ichihara is a new, tender, beautiful, cute children's book published by Museyon.

In this children's book protagonists are two little lambs.
I asked for this book because living in a countryside once we had sheep and lambs. There is not maybe another animal more sweet, tender and cute than a lamb.

In the story Poco and Moco  are twins and you know how special they're twins.

They live together, they share time together, they have a special connection although in this case Poco and Moco are a male and a female. 

They love to be best friends; in general when they get in trouble they prefer to get in trouble... together, and they play most of the time together.

They're are not similar in many things starting from sex and differences when they go to the bathroom. Yes, these lambs are humanized.

Poco loves bread, Moco falls in love for desserts. Both of them share a big passion for donugs, so like all good brothers and sisters would do they divide the donug for eating it, sharing that with pleasure without egoism or prevarication.

There are also other differences. Poco's room is plenty of beautiful toys, all put on the carpet and wherever you look at, Moco's room is much more cleaned.

The beauty of being twins is that they search for the help of the other one when they need it.

And in their differences, they love to playing different games, they love to experience different life and they have completely different dreams for their life and future, the beauty of been twins is this one: that they will be there for each other and they will always be best friends.

This charming, beautiful, very well illustrated book will be so loved by your children trust me because it is peaceful, because what you will find are just good values, good feelings, beautiful actions passing through the serenity of a normal life. There is a great calm, a beauty joy, and the idea of a serene and harmonic situation.

This children's book can be chosen for all that families with some twins or just for let understand to children the importance of being best friends with their brothers and sisters. Also when they are not twins because there is nothing more beauty than to be best friends, living an harmonic life together.

I thank Museyon for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Black Prince of Florence The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro dé Medici by Catherine Fletcher

The Black Prince of Florence The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro dé Medici by Catherine Fletcher a book published by Oxford University Press.

If you are a passionate of Italy, if you fall in love for Florence because once you visited it or just you want to discover more about Florentine's Rinascimental history, this book is for you.

In an engaging tale that will keep you intrigued, we will discover the most powerful family of Florence in the 1500, the one of dé Medici focusing in particular in the character of Alessandro, called the Black Prince because a bastard of Lorenzo and Simunetta a lady of oriental origins and a slave at the Medici's mansion probably and so black if compared to the rest of the family.
Simunetta, his mother, was married but for what it is known, she made happy also other men of dè Medici, but probably the dad was Lorenzo the Magnificent.

The problem of a new guide when Lorenzo dé Medici called the Magnificent died for syphilis. There were two bastards: one Ippolito son of Giuliano and the other one Alessandro son of Lorenzo.

At the end the choice fell on Alessandro.

Lovers of weapons, Alessandro loved to collecting and presenting them to his friends. He did all his best for bettering the condition of Florence  and surrounding areas, during his seven years of reign, Urbino included in his jurisdiction. He didn't spend a lot for Cortona it is remarked, just 1000 lire.

As many other powerful people at the end he was killed without too many compliments for a conspiracy. Trust me: at that time it was a miracle to staying alive if you were an important man. I discovered that there was a certain Agostino da Gubbio tailor of Alessandro.

Beautiful biography, reading this book was like to meet the protagonists of this fascinating book thanks to a wonderful writing-style and a fresh historic beautiful real tale. The author loved to treat the topic and that is why this book is so powerful.


I thank NetGalley and Oxford University Press for the digital copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

I am a Tyrannosaurus by Tatsuya Miyanishi

It's one of the most  famous children's book this one I am a Tyrannosaurus written by Tatsuya Miyanishi. In Japan this series sold more than 3 million of copies and it's arrived now in the USA. It will be published soon by Museyon.

We are in the Prehistoric age, when there were pretty weird, big and  giants animals. Some were innocent and pacific, other ones were horrible and it was better to go somewhere else, running away! without excuses.
Meeting a Tyrannosaurus would have meant meeting a great danger.

The story starts with a kind and gentle family of Pteranodon, prehistoric birds.
They nested an egg and soon a little pteranodon for the joy of their parents was born.
Oh: they loved him immensely, cuddling him, taking great care of him teaching him education and how to live in this world, sometimes a dangerous world, how to fly, how to avoid a tyrannosaurus adding him that it is important to help anyone who is in trouble.

This "anyone" will make the difference in the life of little pteranodon. When ready, his parents decided that it was the moment to set him free for enjoy life. He was ready for starting an independent life.

At first little pteranodon was surprised because mom and dad were not close to him. And now what to do?

But immediately after he discovered that a nasty Tyrannosaurus was searching to eat him. Thanks to the explosion of a volcano it didn't happen but...Look, poor Tyrannosaurus he was badly injured, thought little pteranodon.

This children's book remarks the importance of helping all kind of  people, creatures, also the nastiest ones, remembering of course their own nature and so setting them free and going away once the help has been given.
No one could change the nature of the Tyrannosaurus but giving help and saving a life was more important than anything else.

Little pteranodon didn't mind if the Tyrannosaurus wanted to eat him at first.
I mean, yes of course but... He knew that now he needed help, his life needed to be saved respecting the intrinsic nature of that creature, born not for being a positive one but a hunter and one of the most terrible dinosaurs you could have met in the Prehistoric age.

At the same time, this children's book wants to give us another lesson: that also someone like a Tyrannosaurus can act kindly, and for extension maybe also a nasty person can understands the goodness created by another person. The Tyrannosaurus tried to be gentle with the little pteranodon but the little bird remembered what his parents said to him regarding the Tyrannosaurus and once healed preferred to going away.

The Tyrannosaurus understood although said: "I just wanted to thank you..."

Enchanting children's book with a lot of important thematics inside, it's intelligent, profound, and can be the start of great conversations with your children about kindness, goodness, badness, help.

Highly recommended.


I thank Museyon for the digital copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Standpoints 10 Old Ideas in a New World by Svend Brinkmann

We live in an egoistical society and the mutation of values during these past decades are causing paradoxical situations.

Standpoints 10 Old Ideas in a New World by Svend Brinkmann being a psychologist  and philosopher remarks the distorted role of psychology more focused on the individual, his/her self-realization without taking in consideration the idea of God or serious values in his/her existence.

At the same time we live in a society where people, if we are kind and generous with them ask to themselves why we are kind and generous with them, because of the egoism that there is around, because they wouldn't act like this if they wouldn't obtain something in return.
They would be keepers, not givers.
The idea? That everything must have a price. Also a simple and innocent act of kindness lived with suspect.

Where this world is going on?

The author starts analyzing a comment by one of the most stunning and intelligent actors and director we have around: Woody Allen. Jewish, he doesn't believe in God.

But: life is just this or there is something else?

If we put God aside there are serious problems in the society because men can think of acting without values as if they would be immortals, and with great immorality.

Self-books are nice, admits Brinkmann but they focus mainly on the self of the person not on the quality of his/her life.
It's silly to be compassionate because "we must be" compassionate so that others will be compassionate with us, or to donate for receiving back something. It's not that the modality for acting with real kindness and real generosity remarks the author.

In a world so confused and without a firm asset  who can give us answers if not the thinkers of the past, sure of what they saw, what they experienced, what they lived followed by new and inspired philosophers?

This one the ten chapters:

1. The Good (Aristotle)
2. Dignity (Kant)
3. The Promise (Nietzsche)
4. The Self (Kierkegaard)
5. Truth (Arendt)
6. Responsibility (Løgstrup)
7. Love (Murdoch)
8. Forgiveness (Derrida)
9. Freedom (Camus)
10. Death (Montaigne)

Standpoints will  put order in a world built for using other people more than for enjoying of the company of the other ones with sincerity and honesty giving value to our life and existence seen not just an egoistical life but as a life that should be shared with optimism, with sincerity, with joy, and with the certainty that life is precious.
What a melancholy sometimes for the old times and generations who truly knew, thanks to war, misery, what it meant real friendship, love, relaxation, sunny smiles and hospitality.

This book is the follow-up of Stand Firm Brinkmann's best-seller and should be shared, discussed, and should not be kept just for ourselves, because communities need to better their own ethical conditions, like all of us as well

I thank Polity for the physical copy of this book.




Anna Maria Polidori

Einstein His Space and Times by Steven Gimbel

Jewish Lives is a branch of Yale Press dedicated to biographies of eminent Jewish portrayed in all their magnificence.

The site explains: "Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences."

I decided to pick up Einstein His Space and Times by Steven Gimbel. Why? Einstein is  the Father of the Theory of General Relativity and the Newton of the XX century so it sounded proper to give space to him.
To start with him.

He has been a revolutionary man with a revolutionary theory in a revolutionary time where sufferance, hate, discrimination, a new asset of the world mixed at a new vision of the universe, space, time, at the appearance of the atomic bomb and new and never seen perils like the massive destruction caused by a nuclear war.
Gimbel is a philosopher but his book presents a great clarity when he speaks in detail of physics' thematics as well.
I noticed that the author is frank, honest giving of Einstein a complete portrait but at the same time he treats him with respect, reverence.

This one is the first real biography I read of Albert Einstein and I found it  compelling, captivating.

Albert Einstein's family was Jewish but very opened, so little Albert studied for a long time in a catholic school, absorbing also the other religion created by another revolutionary Jew: Jesus.

Albert Einstein was a rebel student, someone intolerant at school, teachers, conventions and someone who preferred to learn and develop his own ideas without to follow what teachers said.
He wanted to think with his own brain.

When he completed his studies no one wanted to see him around for a work for this reason: his instability, and also his lack of discipline. Everyone thought that a guy like that one wasn't the best person to choose and hire.

But a friend helped Einstein and his situation started to change in better permitting him to elaborate his theory of relativity and at the same time to earn some money.

It's simple to understand reading this biography why once Einstein said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
He was in grade to see what no other one was seeing thanks first of all to his fervid imagination, an open mind.

Opposition against this theory was cruel under many aspects, but I guess most people were also envious and jealous because of this brain and his capacity of seeing a new universe, a new world under a complete different perspective. Someone who put in discussion a past of centuries made of certainties, talking of physics.

This biography will also treat the sad relationship and marriage with Mileva Maric the christian physicist, his first wife and the arrival of Elsa, Einstein's cousin, like also Einstein's worries for his children and his long trips made for money for giving them certainties. The money of his Nobel Prize went to his children.

Princeton University and Wisconsin University paid something like 15.000 dollars, an immense amount of money for that time to Einstein for a series of conferences in the USA in 1921.
The physicist accepted with great pleasure to attend these conferences and the first contact established with Princeton became a long story of respect, collaboration, friendship with that institution.
Being a physicist Einstein's home became Princeton under many aspects when he settled in the USA. There he spent most of his years although as added Gimbel, Einstein felt his existential life like the one of a man without a land and without a country.

In the book also the political views of Einstein that you will see will change and will be delusions.
It is analyzed his idea of religion. After all as writes Gimbel a Jew remains a Jew also when he isn't particularly religious.

It is a touching book and biography this one that I suggest to everyone because lovely, in grade to reveal the real Einstein to the world, with clarity.

I thank Yale University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori