Dogs Still Know Best Two Angels Guide their Human Thought, Grief, Learning & Love by Angie Salisbury with Iris Matos

Dogs Still Know Best Two

Angels Guide their Human Thought, Grief, Learning & Love by Angie Salisbury with Iris Matos is the real story of Angie, her passions for dogs and the terrible loss of both her dogs. The author musn't convince me of the power of love and the existence and presence of our beloved pets passed away. I know that not just pets but also humans are watching over us once dead and maybe with more power than not when they were alive. When my little dog died because a bit old, he appeared to me in dreams. He was peacefully and beautifully running in a field with green grass and he was happy. I dreamt him two times in this way and sometimes when I go somewhere for a walk sounds strange not communicate anymore with him. Walking  with a dog in a daily base is an extraordinary discovery.

The author suffered terribly when both of her beloved dogs disappeared, but this pain became reason not just of growth but discoveries, sensorials, emotionals, feeling that her beloved pets were and are still here; because her dogs didn't never abandon her but they are still close to her; they started to appear to her with special signals after their death. A touching account for whoever is in love for dogs and pets in general.

Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Fashion Designer, written by Nancy Moser

The Fashion Designer, written by Nancy Moser

is a quick reading and the second book of the saga The Pattern Artist. The story of Annie starts this time when, arrived more or less from a year in NYC with her husband, we are at the beginning of the last century decides once she lost her job  to launch herself in the world of fashion and style creating a brand in grade of being worn by all women thanks also to other friends.

They are at first financed by a couple although this couple would want something more classic and exclusive. The story is long but pretty quick, because plenty of dialogues. 

Situations that protagonists will cope with are the msot diversified. 

I appreciate a lot the courage of these group of women, and their tenacity for realizing their dreams and what they wanted to become in their existence. 

Many thematic, some of them also pretty devastating, this book  opens a large discussion about a lot of topics.

Warmly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Barbour for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Frasi, e Parole d'Auguri Il Bon ton del Regalo Come fare pacchi regalo, fiocchi e biglietti d'auguri Il linguaggio dei fiori

Yesterday, going to Gubbio I stopped by to the Bookstore of DelBaldo a publishing house I love so badly and asked for the offer of three books at just 5 euros. In a myriads of available titles, books of angels are close to the one of cooking, baking, gardening, manuals for remembering birthday close to the ones of inspiring journals, I discovered this one: Frasi, e Parole d'Auguri Il Bon ton del Regalo Come fare pacchi regalo, fiocchi e biglietti d'auguri Il linguaggio dei fiori.

Apparently another book to keep for some inspiration, I thought. But I know DelBaldo and the beauty that there is in this publishing house. And so, Oh my Goodness, when I opened it I remained shocked for its beauty. This book is wonderful.

From illustrations passing through poems and beautiful pages of people of culture of all ages and places, divided of course for theme this one is a real treasure to keep or to present to someone else, because trust me, you will make a beautiful figure with it. It is a splendid book to be kept in an area where it would be visible. Romantic, absolutely poetic and stunningly unique a special tribute at the beginnings goes to Catharine Klein  born in Russia in 1861 and dead in Berlin in 1929. She was in fact a great illustrator.

Meaning and colors of flowers, best occasions for presenting them and what flower is best to present for not making a bad figure, cards, graduations, wives, husbands, Christmas, Friendship, religious occasions, birthdays, funerals, Easter, Valentine's Day, you will be guided in a surprising, colored, trip in what it is after all our daily life, with tribulations, joys, happinesses, with a delicate touch because our life must be always plenty of poetry, romanticism, grace and beauty.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Giraffe Asks for Help by Nyasha Chicowore Illustrated by Janet McDonnell

Asking for help is incredibly important; when we are little, but also once grown-ups. This, the main message spread by the children's book Giraffe Asks

for Help by Nyasha Chicowore Illustrated by Janet McDonnell.

Illustrations are superbly amicable, friendly and warm, so children and adults will feel that they are cuddle by nice characters while they are reading this story, accompanied by a warm atmosphere and positive vibes. It pays a lot; children are empatic and it's important to transmit at any level, illustrations and dialogue the idea of being welcomed into the story. It was a long long time I didn't see so sunny characters, with beautiful facial expressions, wonderful smiles as the ones I have seen here.  

The story: Gary is a little giraffe. It's his birthday, the 6th one and he is thrilled because he imagines that at this age he can tries to eat the leaves also from the tallest tree of the savana. Everyone wish him a happy and joyous birthday and Gary is happy of all these attention from the elephant, the lion and so on: he is thrilled and joyous. Just...He can't still reach the tallest leaves in the big tree. He tries in every possible ways but he fails, till when someone suggest him of asking for some help. When he asks for some help everyone is more than happy to realize Gary's dream so that, although not yet sufficiently tall as he should be for eating that leaves, he will reach them thanks to the help of his friends and that leaves will be wonderfully delicious.

Help, asking and receiving help is an important thematic. 

Asking for help means like that a kid is not in grade to do something and so maybe it can be seen as a signal of weakness but...Is it always in that way? Sometimes asking for help means also to interact much more with friends, understanding also their point of view, how a problem can be sorted out seeing and lived it also differently thanks to a second or third perspective given by a friend.

How much your children ask for help? How much autonomous are they? What could be done much better by your children if they would ask for some help?

Your kids, if they will ask for help, will become emphatic people, someone in grade also of giving help when other kids are in difficulty, increasing their altruism.

Help is better than anything else, the message of this powerful children's book published by Magination Press book imprint of the American Psychological Association.

Highly recommended to everyone; illustrations are so warm and tender, characters so sunny and wonderfully friendly that I know that you will adore this book and if you are a kid you will read it dozens of times because you won't want to leave Gary and Company and their beautiful life.

I want to add that the story has been humanized, so Gary although a giraffe lives in a house with plants and flowers; he has books and sisters playing with various different dolls. 

Oh, I know that you'll love these characters!

I thank Eurospean for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

American Indian Myths and Legends by George Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz

If you are a passionate of Native Americans, their traditions, customs, numerous legends and fascinations there is not a best book than this one: American Indian

Myths and Legends by George Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz. Published by Pimlico, I found this book  at the second hand bookstore of the british ladies of the charity Books for Dogs.

These legends are comprehensively numerous. They are old in most cases, transmitted orally and they space from the big thematic of creation to other ones. Native Americans tried also to figuring out why moon and sun are so different. That legend is pretty shocking. A story of an absuse.

We will discover what happened to raven, he wasn't a nice animal after all, and why the crow became black (spoiler: he was white!) and why the owl has this shape. Much much more in a book in grade to make the difference. Most of these legends can be with tranquillity read also by your children or at your children. I would warmly suggested you to do that, because they are stories, legends and myths in grade to develop the fantasy of children and adults as well.

You can read the entire book or as I did, some of them in the various numerous parts, ten, of this book. Captivating, wonderful parts, where all the iconic and dreaming world of native americans is revealed in all its powerful way of communication.

Anna Maria Polidori

NetGalley and problems for downloading ebooks

These past months are very stressing, as you know.

I don't have anymore internet connection at home. At the end I decided of talking of with some attorneys of an association of consumers for trying to sort out the problem. Speaking, it appeared more than clear that I have been also hacked several times and in various websites and that was why, probably I wasn't in grade of downloading ebooks by NetGalley, just an example of what happened during these years.

I am an affectionate of this platform. There are books still not yet published that I can read and review. It is a fantastic experience that I ADORE!!!

I have publishing houses with which I work constantly well, and I love to explore the book universe. But, you know that.

I want to inform all of you that in this phase I changed password at my Amazon.com and Amazon.it site. For a certain time if you visited the Amazon.com profile I lived in Florence. Pity I didn't write down the address; in the italian profile in Rome.

Said this, maybe it will be necessary to reset Amazon Kindle re-starting from the beginning. I am so sorry again with the publishing houses, authors, if I didn't give coverage to some of them properly. Trust me when I tell you that this one is a moment of great confusion.

Many thanks for your attention

Anna Maria Polidori

Email...

Situation of the e-mail where most of the e-mails of publishing authors and publishing houses are conveyed.

Yes there are problems there as well.

Situation became paradoxical also regarding that e-mail because at a certain point it was impossible to check my e-mail as I did in a daily base.

Once it remained blocked for more than a year and half and I started to use another account for receiving my e-mails with great damages because I forgot of reporting to the site of our pensionistic system the amount accumulated during the various current years, paying much more because communicated later.

Anyway, once, for curiosity I googled my old e-mail and voilà! It was working. To me it was a great joy!

I am sorry with christian authors that sent me their ebooks, I participate at their contest with great joy, I love amish books for example but this one is not the best moment for read their ebooks for the problems I told you previously but...Please, continue to send me e-mails. They said me that on January maybe the situation of the dial-up (we don't have DSL or optic fiber, I live in a countryside), will be hopefully sorted out.

I am a very patient person.

Anna Maria Polidori

Geniuses Together American Writers in Paris in the 1920s by Humphrey Carpenter

Detailed and passionate, surely Geniuses Together American Writers in Paris in the 1920s

by Humphrey Carpenter tells a story pretty profound and interesting of all the writers and creatives emigrated, better, expatriated because of the Prohibitionist Era from the USA in the Old Europe and precisely in the lazy, romantic Paris.

But Carpenter, intelligently doesn't start his trip from the 1920s but from the 1770s and before when Franklin and before, other diplomats, spent a lot of time in France, trying to cemeted a good friendship with people of the Old World and at the same time enjoying Europe.

Henry James did the same and Gertrude Stein was substantially born and grown up in France.

But why most Americans picked up as first choices Paris in the 1920s? The most important intellectuals (you will remember when Hemingway at first thought as first option Italy when he married Hadley but then someone else suggested him: "If you want to work seriously goes to Paris because you'll find the best writers and people in grade of being helpful") choses this Capital because Paris represented what the USA were not anymore: the US were becoming a materialistic land and place and in this capital, in the Old World, they could find also a more normal dimension where living well meant also appreciate the good and little things of life.

Who represents well the so-called Lost Generation baptized in this way one day by an irritated Gertrude Stein to a shocked Ernest Hemingway? Not this one, because later he realized all his dreams and more although he couldn't totally win his internal demons but as adds the author Harold Stearns, poor and and broken.

These people were real geniuses? The author thinks that "The geniuses had mostly turned turned out not to be geniuses after all. Yet they had been geniuses at being together, drinking together, sleeping together, and quarrelling together; and that was something worth remembering."

Not only: they were extraordinary people. My fascination for Sylvia Beach and her work with James Joyce proves that dedication and help exists in this world. Sylvia did this world and the other for Joyce but Joyce after all when signed for Random House remembered few of the help received by her, telling just that: "All she ever did was to make me a present of the best years of her life."

No words...

Without Sylvia Beach Joyce surely couldn't never have seen published the Ulysses, a book not loved by part of intellectuals of that time, and the Dubliners. Let's add that personally if the course of history would have been totally different I wouldn't never been traumatized the first year of english at the high school when I still knew few words for reading the Dubliners the book choosen by our english teacher (I just studied french) and Joyce wouldn't never been reason of frequent tachicardias per two decades when I saw, terrorized, his works displayed in book stalls or bookshops. I know that I would have been traumatized by another author, of course, there wasn't escapism in this sense. I made some peace with him, bought an used copy of The Dubliners a year and half ago but it was very hard.

Ernest Hemingway was  another altruistic man, and, back to the book of great help  bringing the copies in the American territory. That book, the Ulysses was banned in the USA. There was a solidariety that didn't take in consideration money. Sylvia Beach helped Joyce financially, but also providing him good doctors for his eyes's problems but later Joyce didn't remember it when he became rich thanks to Random House for what I read.

Enjoy this book, enjoy Hemingway, Robert McAlmon the publisher, Pablo Picasso, enjoy Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company, the joy and altruism of Sylvia Beach, her love for books and authors; enjoy a fantastic moment, that after a while knew an end. When Hemingeay left, when people moved somewhere else for a reason or another. But... This historical parisienne's period for all these expatriates was remarkably important and will always be remembered for being an exceptional moment in the history of literature, because the most prominent thinkers interacted, lived, loved, hated, dreamt, were born as established authors all together in Paris, changing the face of the capital thanks to their influence and customs, and the one of the world and literature. Let's just think at the new writing-style created by Hemigway.

This one has been one of the most beautiful books I read about the 1920s in Paris. Written with passion, love and desire of telling to you something more, highly and warmly suggested to everyone.

Anna Maria Polidori

Bookshops by Jorge Carrion

It was an age I wanted to read this book by Jorge Carrion

Bookshops. I wrote several months ago to the publishing house Quercus, but it was impossible a book review copy so I ordered an used copy.

Intelligent, brilliant, this book is for whoever is in love, badly in love for books and has the desire of exploring the complicated, monumental, wonderful world of the most important, old, fantastic bookshops located in the entire world.

It's a trip this one that will touch a lot of lands, the entire Globe. The author will visit, explore and first of all will live for us the most remarkable bookshops in the world.

The book starts with several essays written by various authors, Sweig but also the italian Luigi Pirandello, about the importance of reading, taking in consideration some protagonists in love for reading. Reading is wonderful. My dream is that culture as also in Northern European Countries soon or late won't be a story just for the so-called "elite" but of masses and that ignorance would be replaced by desire of knowledge.

Bookshops are dramatically important for readers; they create a special place where to staying, where to create connections, new friends, and where reading or choosing the books we want to read or buying in complete peace. I don't know you but, personally, when I choose books, this process can take hours.

A favorite bookshop to my point of view is chosen by a reader because of political common views, because dreaming, because there we find that relaxation impossible to find somewhere else, because we can call that place home and we know that we will be always welcomed and no one will count the minutes we will stay there but they will ask us of staying, letting us appreciate the place.

Freedom. Words are this. Freedom from the scheme of our daily routine, freedom from our daily dues; reading a book we can fly away from the place we live in, seeing and visualizing other worlds, times, people, places, events. And it's life and you are living that life, because you are imagining it. So, this process of imagination is life,dreams, possibility, relaxation, hope, creation.

History of books, and of the first important library of Alexander of Egypt, still felt and lived of course as a horrible loss for knowledge is fascinating.

Italian bookshops have made the difference with the arrival of eminent italians, Americans authors; in Paris we have seen the arrival of two Shakespeare and Companies, with two charismatic owners: Sylvia Beach and George Whitman.

Let's return to Paris, do you want, my reader?

Let's speak of that historical moment, opened by two books that made the difference because in part prohibited: Les FLeurs du Mal and Madame Bovary. We are in the mid 1800 but these two books meant a moment of fracture with the past. There was innovation, there was desire of expressing in strong ways new messages through the powerful message of words.

Later, the expatriates in Paris at the beginning of 1900s understood something crucial: that maybe it was better to self-protect themselves, their creativity and the work that they were creating, but not only. They refused of following what was trendy in the literary market of the USA; they were searching for escapism and they were following originality; writers but also journalists loved to develop new messages with incredible creativity and fertility and thanks to the desire of coming out with something new in the mind. They promoted themselves.

Sylvia Beach fell "literary in love" for James Joyce launching this author in the Olymp of literature with the Ulysses. No one will be upset I hope, if I write that if James Joyce is so famous, is thank to her. Sylvia Beach encouraged, helped reporters as Ernest Hemingway and other ones at becoming great names in literature. George Whitman won't forget the model built by Sylvia Beach and will create a fairy-tale of bookshop where people, wagons during the decades slept there, helped George in the store, helping him to create this amazing reality, an utopistic world in the real sense of the world, that became reality because happily wanted by the owner. Whitman lived with these two mottos "Give what you can, keep what you need" and "Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise." Whitman trusted people, strangers, everyone, donating them the possibility of becoming different people, exploring the world of books, reading, writing, working in a field they loved so badly. Maybe sometimes these people were partially starved, but not of knowledge, abundant in Shakespare and Company. Not everyone maybe but most of these tumbleweeds became great, good writers.

Sometimes when I think at these two people, Sylvia Beach and George Whitman I think at the importance that Shakespeare and Company and their existences meant for many creatives and what would have happened if the creatives in the early 1920s or later would have been surrounded by a selfish Sylvia Beach.

The course of history would have been completely different.

The book explores the oldest bookshops existing in the worls, including one located in Cambridge.

When books became a real business? It happened with the Victorian age, with Sir Walter Scott  and Charles Dickens in particular. We will see which chains are monopolizing the market in the various areas of the world not forgetting Oceania.

It's not important where you will pick up your next books, it is important that you find a magical place in great of giving to you comfort, hope, relaxation, calm.

I warmly suggest you this book, because informative, but at the same time a narration in grade of transporting you with warm everywhere. The homage at numerous italian bookshops is wonderful, like also at numerous italian authors. I didn't know these italian realities, but it will be for sure a pleasure to look at them more closely.

Anna Maria Polidori

Fitzgerald & Hemingway Works and Days by Scott Donaldson

If you are an estimator of Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald you cant' absolutely miss the latest book released by Columbia University Press Fitzgerald & Hemingway Works and Days by Scott Donaldson. It's a magnificient portrait of both these two writers "read" and seen through their works and the thematic they appreciated the most. Divided in two sections, you can read all this book, the portion of the author you like the most, taking also inspiration from every chapter for appreciating more the works written by these authors, or it can be used for school or as a good introductions to their books.

We will meet in Fitzgerald appearance, richness but also desolation, desperation, loss, money problems. Fitzgerald, great friend by Hemingway introduced the pennieless writer at the Esquire, where Hemingway would have written a lot of wonderful pieces that made the history also of a new way of making and writing in journalism; a different writing-style, the same one that we will find in his numerous novels.

Nothing is missed in the reconstruction of the existence of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The story of Francis Scott Fitzgerald starts from his birth, his arrival to Princeton his first love-delusions, the entrance in scene of Zelda in his existence, the years in Paris and New York and at the same time the arrival, pretty quickly of fame with his pieces and later thanks to his first and acclaimed novel This Side of Paradise.

Fitzgerald started to write this book when still in Princeton and it is remarkably autobiographic. Written with, what the writeer writes "So sure a sense of the times" it's a strong good-bye to the fascination of Victorian Age and the good manners, apparently brought with it. People were scandalized by what written by Fitzgerald: ""None of the Victorian Mothers ...had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed."

The belle, an expression typical of a southerner girl became "flirt" and later "baby vamp." Times were changing like customs as well.

The Great Gatsby immortalizes Fitzgerald in the Olymp of writers because as someone wrote (T.S. Eliot) that book was "The first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James."

Ernest Hemingway. Loved, appreciated, someone obsessively social, but also with profound demons in his own existence one of the main theme of his books, war apart, is death, and in particular the connection of life and suicide, particularly because heavily touched by it, because of the departure in that way of his dad and later, his frequent depressions.

Hemingway, like also Francis Scott Fitzgerald will always use his personal experiences and his reality for writing; changing names, situations, but slowly slowly writing down his own existence, seen and filtered through the eyes of the writer in all his books.

He was a man of strong passions and being a pasionario he wasn't diplomatic at all. He wrote strong words against Mussolini and his books would have been burned at some point because banned by the regime. He was in this way with everyone else; colleagues, other writers. He loved and hated; strongly and never falsely.

Although at some point abandoned the journalistic career for the one of writer, he would have met in the sector a lot of friends.

It's not an error saying that when someone writes there are problems around; writing, like painting, means also fighting against the soul's demons of the creative.

Scott Donaldon's writing-style is fascinating and captivating, because he loves the topic and he is in grade of transmitting very well what he knows to everyone.

Highly recommended.

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

Anna Maria Polidori

Dear readers and publishing houses...

Good afternoon my affectionate readers.

I want to explain you what it is going on from a certain time at this part.

I don't have anymore internet connection at home. I had dial-up but at the beginning of february for still unknown and unclarified reasons I don't have the service anymore, although I am still paying for it.

This fact, and the use of the smartphone for every little thing meant that with the time my book requests are more funny. I tend to attach pictures instead of requesting books with titles, names of authors and so on. I do that for praticity, because writing in a little smart phone is absolutely an experience I wouldn't suggest to anyone.

I want to clarify this aspect with the various publishing houses.

What other else? The process of editing is more complicated. I write the piece with the desktp PC, I pass it in a flashdrive, (yes, the smartphone is not in a good relationship with the PC) I open my netbook where I put flashdrive and smartphone together and I do this passage. Then, also if written in .doc format, it is read in .rtf so it's necessary to convert the piece and only later I can post it. It's the final phase so if you see that the title is not complete etc, you know what I experience everytime: it's an experience.

Oh: another fact. Last february various packages of books were rejected. I contacted more than ten publishing houses for trying to understand which packages were rejected. It was an experience because february was a pretty cold month, and I sent all these e-mails outside, and I was very upset for what happened.

I want to inform all the publishing houses that the problems should be sorted out.

Remember that if you send me a copy without priority, so using the postal system, probably it will reach me at the 100%. Differently where there are priorities I have the old and dear address of Gubbio. I also ask you of telling to your courier of contacting me if there are problems.

I thank everyone for the collaboration and I am so sorry if you find my e-mails strange or weird. These months are not simple at all.

Anna Maria Polidori

Sweet Bird of Youth, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Modern society is complicated. Let's admit it, and the play by Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named

Desire is all of it and more, because it remarks the power of men and internal weakness of women, put in confrontation and passing through sex and desire.

A woman can be abused in many different ways.

Of course there is also the thematic of how a woman interacts with a man and what a man thinks of that woman.

The first London production had as Blanche Du Bois

an intense Vivien Leigh, directed by Laurence Olivier. Leigh passed at the story also as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.

When I discovered that a friend of mine, Sean Rose was on stage with this play  by Tennessee Williams at the Odyssey Theater in a production directed by Jack Heller I thought that I wanted to treat this play published by Penguin in the series Penguin Plays.

It's a hard story this one, where there is no redemption and where protagonists in a way or in another will lose their battle for a best life: why this? Because Stella at the end will remain with her abusive husband, no other words for describing that man while Blanche her sister will be internated for a profound psychological crisis after that the husband of Stella, Stanley, raped her, while the wife was in the hospital for having a baby and her supposed boyfriend Mitch, not in grade of saving her from the horror she saw close to her, and that she wanted to avoid. Everyone dream a best life, but these protagonists are like trapped in their existences.

Blanche is not a saint, let's remark it. Stanley will discover a lot of facts that Blanche would have preferred not to tell.

She escaped from the city where she lived in because, teacher, she made sex with a student, then, fired, she lived in a hotel the Flamingo one famous for being a place where prostitutes very well accepted.

Mitch, her new flame, asks her some explanations and if the stories  reported by Stanley are real. They are, at the end she will confess.

Blanche loves him and when Mitch at the end of the sixth act tells her: "You need somebody. And I need somebody, too. Could it be - you and me, Blanche?"

Blanche is hopeful. "Sometimes there's God - so quickly."

Blanche was pretty unlucky with her husband, because her husband hiding his homosexuality once discovered by her with another man preferred to kill himself than to live the experience of a coming out.

Blanche will try all her best at some point with vehement words, to convince her sister that Stanley is an abusive man and husband adding that, if the sister is realistically loving him she is trembling for her, because there are bestial aspects in that man. Someone from the Age of Stone adds, sure of it, Blanche.

The final line put on the mouth of Blanche by Williams is this one and tell all the solitude of this lady: "....I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" remarking the impossibility of finding in the family an answer for sorting out problems, but also the impossibility of escapism, researched in many possible ways and firstly thank to Mitch.

Blanche imagined a future with Mitch and the possibility of going away from the toxic place where she lived in with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley.

Unfortunately it was not possible and this time mediocrity, luridity won against the possibility of an existence more simple and less complicated.

Anna Maria Polidori

Scott Fitzgerald's Taste of France Recipies inspired by the cafes and bars of Fitzgerald's Paris and the Riviera in the 1920s by Carol Hylker

F.Scott Fitzgerald's

Taste of France Recipies inspired by the cafes and bars of Fitzgerald's Paris and the Riviera in the 1920s is a cookbook written by Carol Hilker and published by Cico Books. A splash in the french culinary past and present without forgetting the evolution that food and drinks had, thanks to the arrival in Paris and in the Riviera of a lot of Americans in the 1920s.

The so-called famous drink Bloody Mary was invented in Paris; the most famous french bread the baguette didn't exist 'till the 1920s and was introduced because a fast bread ready for breakfast.

Divided in sections: Breakfast, Luncheon, Horse D'Ouvres, Soup and Salad, Dinner, Dessert and Baking, Drinks the author will tell us beautiful anedocts of the couple Zelda-Francis Scott Fitzgerald, at the same time introducing us the favorite dishes of their friends as well. We will discover that, if Fitzgerald and Hemingway loved a robust breakfast with ham and egg, Zelda appreciated the most Buttermilk Biscuits while James Joyce went crazy for hot chocolate and Café au Lait.

A dish introduced thanks to the arrival and influence of Americans in France in the 1920s was the devil egg salad sandwich, before not existing. Gertrude Stein went crazy for the roast beef picnic sandwich.

I found curious Sara Murphy's creamed corn risotto with poached eggs while the Pot au Feu was one of the dishes you could eat more often if invited at the house of Gertrude Stein for lunch.

Mentioned the escargots, we will learn how to cook a delicious Scott's tomato soup (great story behind), the James Joyce's Beef Tea, how to bake a wonderful baguette and a stunning Bouillabaisse; we will learn that one of the favorite dishes of T.S. Eliot was the duck a l'Orange. Alice Toklas, the companion of Gertrude Stein was a great cook: she loved to bake often butter cookies for the guests. I signal also a butter tea cake, strawberry with balsamic cream and the Cherry Clafoutis.

Wonderful and yummy pictures, each recipe is accompagnied by a picture and an exaustive explanation. If you love literature and these authors, I am more than sure that this book can be absolutely indispensible for you for preparing a launcheon at theme: "Taste of Food of the Jazz Age" you can call the event.

Anna Maria Polidori

Happy Birthday! by Mamoru Suzuki

Happy Birthday!

by Mamoru Suzuki is a tender childrens book by Museyon dedicated to the most special holiday that each person has: the birthday. Maybe sometimes we are distracted and we don't understand the meaning of that festivity all taken by our busy life. We send a distracted happy birthday but the day of the birth of a person is special and if we do care, we should celebrate, because during that day someone special became a member of this world with all the problems, sufferances, joys and happiness that offers.

The description of the arrival of this baby is tender and poetic. A childrens book that I would want to suggest to all children and...Parents.

Illustrations are cute, beautiful and extremely friendly. Your kid will adore it and considering the topic, this childrens book could be a first start for let understand to your children, if not too little, the meaning of love, desire of a family and sex.

Highly recommended.

I thank Museyon for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

L'angelo di Auschwitz Mala Zimetbaum l'abrea che sfidò i tedeschi, The Angel of Auschwitz by Frediano Sessi

L'angelo di Auschwitz Mala Zimetbaum l'abrea che sfidò i tedeschi

, The Angel of Auschwitz by Frediano Sessi is a strong story about a girl called Mala, living in Aversa.

The book is published by Marsilio.

This girl, she had many sibilings, and their family pretty numerous, was an activist of an association created for promoting peace and understanding between all folks, considering the anti-semitic winds that before the war, started to blowing always more dangerously creating discrimination, and the consequences we all know.

Arrested when in Bruxelles, Mala was at first brought at Mechelen where she started to understand the atrocities committed by Nazis. Being a girl profoundly in love for languages, she was fluent in so many tongues, she became soon a priviledged prisoner and she worked in an office, cataloging all the people who would have been sent at some point in the camp of Auschwitz. Making some pressures, she was in grade of saving the existence of some little relatives and tried all her best for helping also the rest of prisoners. These pressures for setting free her relatives meant to her the arrival in Auschwitz.

Horrible situation and conditions, people were treated as beasts, Mala was assigned in a section where most of women deceased because one of the most horrible places ,but thanks to the knowledge of various languages, she became again a priviledged prisoner. She could work as a translator, she could eat, she had good clothes, she could spend a lot of time outside, and her life wasn't miserable as the ones of the other prisoners. She could also write letters to her relatives, in particular she established a solid correspondence with her sister.

She sent cryptic messages to her, remarking the fact that although she was a priviledged prisoner, she didn't change her ideas.

Yes, because there is to say that some Jewish decided to join the cause of Germans, fighting close to them, killing other Jews, and working actively in the camps with them. Although in love for Charles, soon Mala met in the camp Edek Galinski and the two started a love-story, planning later to escape from the Auschwitz camp.

I remember that when I interviewed mr. Staub an Ukrainian deported in Auschwitz and I asked him why he didn't never run away from that place, abruptly his eyes saw again that horror; projected in a past never forgotten, he whispered discouraged: "Because, trust me, it was impossible. Impossible."

The idea that some people did it, is irresistable! Sure, they were special prisoners, so people with a certain freedom, but it is irresistable.

The end unfortunately is not positive for the protagonists, but they remain anyway heroes for what they were in grade to do.

Mala was a girl in grade of being helpful; she helped other prisoners, she tried to bring them some food, medicines and whatever the prisoners needed.

I want to read more books written by mr. Sessi. The book is written very well, it is captivating and well structured.

The echoes of Primo Levi and extracts from his books remind to all of us what happened during that period. This book is a strong message for our times.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Ritorno All'Isola by Viveca Sten

What is an homicide if not a puzzle with many pieces that slowly slowly, if investigators are good enough must return at their own place?

This new book by Viveca Sten

Ritorno All'Isola by Marsilio is again another stunning, wonderful book. Set again in the Island of Sandham and Stockholm as protagonists we meet again inspector Thomas Andreasson, but we will also follow the problems of Nora, the ones of Aram.

On Christmas Time a pretty famous reporter, Jeanette Thields, dies all alone, frozen, under strange circumstances. And it's an homicide.

The story appears more complicated than what thought at first.

In these cases no one is innocent or pure and everyone hide something; there is the ex husband of Jeanette fighting for a good cause against the wife; maybe the closest neighbor Anne-Marie; but who knows? This journalist was researching material about a party of extreme right, the leader a woman called Pauline. Who knows? Maybe she was killed by some people of this party because considered not appreciated but felt as a danger.

As you can see the story is pretty complicated, and not just Jeanette will lose her death. What we will learn reading this book is that reality after all is more complicated than what appears at first and motivations for a gesture the one of killing the most diversified.

It's a story of reputation, fear, shame, "errors" committed in the past.

This book is interesting because traces also the portrait of the political situation of Sweden with right parties fighting against immigration, trying to spread the word that difference is dangerous, causing in this way a lot of a problems at immigrants and ruining the peace, serenity and stability of a country in a multi-culturalist reality.

A book that you must read! Quick, interesting, as all the ones written by Viveca Sten are.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori