Altre Concupiscenze by Giorgio Manganelli edited by Salvatore Silvano Nigro

 Altre Concupiscenze by Giorgio Manganelli edited by Salvatore Silvano Nigro published by Adelphi is a great book if you love books and reviews, because it will be inspiring, it will let you reflect

and maybe you'll discover new authors, or you will "read" them thanks to the words of Giorgio Manganelli under another perspective.

What after all we do with our modest work? Although we haven't written the book, we try to see the best in every page of every book so that  people will be intrigued and will buy the book in question. 

A reviewer is, as also writes Manganelli a passionate animal, someone lost in the pages he reads: the reviewer in general must try to find the originalities of a book underlying that peculiarities.

Reviews you'll read, are mainly literary ones: profound, felt, more than the description of the book there is the essence that the work inspired to Giorgio.

I found thrilling, interesting reading his reviews of books by Nabokov, Swift, Yeats, Calasso, Ennio Flaiano, Jack London. 

Beautiful.

Anna Maria Polidori 

A Friendship in Twilight by Jack Miles and Mark C. Taylor

 What a beautiful, warm book is A Friendship in Twilight

Lockdown Conversations on Death and Life by Jack Miles and Mark C.Tyler published by Columbia Press. I warmly suggest to everyone this reading, because of its originality. These two professors of religion, one teaching at the University of California, the second at the Columbia, in fact are friends from...50 years, yes, from the time of their studies at Harvard University. 

They have always been closed friends during these long decades, and when the pandemic erupted in the entire world and the world itself was falling in a general lockdown, they decided that they would have written to each other in a daily base long e-mails, of substance, reporting facts, sharing their impressions on the pandemic, but also on the political internal situation of the USA, art, journalism and its role in the society, gardening, church, lessons, sharing facts, their personal daily frustrations. They started this private conversation, where we are priviledged guests and readers, March 15 2020, and January 6 2021 they had produced something like 1700 pages.

It appeared clear, as wrote Mark, that this pandemic deleted the idea that we were invincibles and that certain prblems experienced by humanity definitely over. Mark calls it: "The terror of the Sublime". That period was also Easter, but a completely different Easter. To Mark, this new horror was like the one experienced when the Twin Towers collapsed: the plague can teach us, writes Mark that we are not the center of the universe: in another passage of that e-mail written april 12 of the lesson never understood of 9/11 Mark asks to Jack Miles: will we learn the lesson of the plague before it is too late to change our tune? The USA remains the country with more departures for Covid: more than a million citizens lost their existence because of it. In the USA at that time there was Donald Trump as president and he didn't believe at this plague because of economical reasons: so, like Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson he adopted anti-vax measures, keeping the situation often, not anymore under control.

Trump is considered severely by these two friends: they understood that it was "a terrible error when Evangelical shifted their support from Carter to Reagan" writes Mark because that policy would have brought in recent times Trump and Trumpism. 

Beautiful. No other words for describing this book and this experiment.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Chant de Noel by Jose-Louis Munuera

 I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens every year. It was a real joy, this time, reading today a french graphic novel based on Dicken's novel: Chant de Noel

Une Histoire de Fantomes. Published by Dargaud rewritten by

José-Luis Munuera

There is some originality in this story because the main protagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge but a sensual but pretty cold lady, Elizabeth Scrooge, who once owned the activity with Bob Marley.

Elizabeth doesn't have a heart in her chest, but a stone: she criticizes everyone: she doesn't want to spend a dime for helping poor people; she complains with her niece because she appreciates Christmas, furious with Cratchit her employer because of the day-off of the 25th. She doesn't like Christmas, but more, she doesn't love people. Once returned home, she starts to see something strange: the phantom is Bob Marley and he tells her that from his death he hasn't known peace and that he would want to help her because if she wants, she could potentially change her destiny. She will receive the visits of three spirits tells her Bob. The phantom of the past Christmases, the one of the current Christmas and the one of the Future Christmases. What Elizabeth will see will create a lot unhappiness: she didn't remember a lot of situations of her remote past: because of her avidity she had lost her boyfriend: she doesn't know of Tiny Tim's illness,  the frail son of Cratchit: without cures he will die soon. Elizabeth, understands that also her departure will be lived as a joy because she hasn't been a good spirit, a good person in this world.

And of course, after this tour de force, se will abruptly change becoming someone completely different.

I loved the illustrations, very strong and powerful and the characterization of Elizabeth and the three spirits. I also loved the warmth transmitted by the rest of the protagonists in their houses.

A graphic novel I warmly suggest to everyone. And maybe the spirit of Christmas remains with you for the rest of the year!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I thank Netgalley for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Cahier Arendt Herne

 Le Cahier de L'Herne on Hannah Arendt

is dense, interesting, absolutely captivating. 

Hannah, born in Germany, studied in prestigious schools, before the advent of the war, when she was forced to go away, in Paris before, and then in the United States later. If most Jewish, emigrants in the USA refused to learnt that new language, blocked by the shock, and determined to remain anchored at the melancholic refugee of past and their homeland, Hannah learnt english very well, but she always, always found a profound and articulated relationship with Germany: she firstly returned there in 1949, and it will be her native language, German that will cement her future relationships with the land where she was born, continuing to think, as she confirmed, in german. Her language. The three questions Arendt will answer in his first book started in 1945 The Origins of Totalitarism are big: What did it happen? Why did it happen this? How, a horror like this one was possible? Three big questions, and two totalitarisms taken in consideration: the german and russian ones.

Totalitarism after all build something that doesn't exist, transforming a plurality of people in unity: with, also the complete destruction of the exterior and interior freedom. Arendt thought that totalitarism was a new phaenomenon in the political scenarios of the times: it was in grade, to build new political systems, destroying completely the past governments, but also juridic, socials and politic traditions. And to Arendt totalitarian regimes didn't appear for case or because there was a charismatic leader behind: no. There are more profound reasons interconnected with the problematic of our times. Which were the problematics of the past century? The atomization of the world, desolation intended as a person abandoned by everyone, including by himself/herself: mutism without dialogue: the idea of didn't find the proper place in the world. To Arendt totalitarism can be one of the answers to the problems of the modern man, finding these regimes as originals. Without sense to this existence, and thanks to the appearance of desolation, very different from other human feelings, the advent of Totalitarism.

Of course man should have rights. Hannah was sure of it and explained that we aren't born equals. We become equals because members of a group, because we want to give rights to everyone: man acts in a world that it is free for building, changing world and society with and only equals. These words permitted to change the most important Declarations: in particular the Declaration universelle des droits de l'Homme 1948, but in particular the statut of refugees. 

Hannah Arendt tried a lot of times to touch the Palestinian discussion with a public appeal signed by most intellectuals in particular when there was the war in 1967. Noam Chomsky, Umberto Terracini, a member of the italian communist party, Aldo Zargani signed this petition. 

Writing a rapport on the language and terminology used by Eichmann during the trial, Hannah arrives at the conclusion that it was impossible to communicate with Eichmann: he didn't see the reality. But also examining the language in profoundity, the birth of the idea of the banality: what produced by Germans has been the most horrific scenario never seeen in the modern world: but in their terms that one was what they did in a daily base. The banalité du mal. A banality that after all it's the product of the relationship of the man with himself. Arendt wrote that the regime prepared historically and politically walking corpses: dismantelling their rights, men became superfluous. With the time Arendt modified the position from mal radical to the banalitè du mal. She wrotes that to her the mal is extreme, true, but never radical. Like a fungi it expands itself on its surface.

What is the role of intellectuals in the society? It is, to Hannah biggest than not for any other individual because power and interest sometimes can have limits. Telling the truth is the only responsability of the intellectuals if they want to be called intellectuals. There are deviant voices: citizens, politicians: everyone affirming their own voice. Intellectuals, affirms Arendt musn't represent the conscience of the nation. 

A beautiful cahier, erudite, dense, explores with great fascination the entire intellectual history of Hannah Arendt and the one of this tribulated world.

I thank L'Herne for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Prayer Map for Hope and Healing Barbour Staff

 The Prayer Map for Hope and Healing

is a new book compiled by Barbour Staff. I missed their books so badly. They have  a special touch for sure. In this new one, a spiral journal, you can creatively add your prayers. Composed by spreads, each of them  will encourage you to write down what you think, compiling lists, adding thoughts, prayers, in a process that at the end will let you show creatively, what you asked to God, and how He answered back to you in this sorta of written dialogue with Him!

Beautifully colored and creative. I highly suggest it to everyone. Perfect for a Christmas Gift!

I thank NetGalley for the copy of this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Little Homesteader: A Winter Treasurey of Recipes, Craft, and Wisdom by Angela Ferraro-Fanning

 Little Homesteader:

A Winter Treasurey of Recipes, Craft, and Wisdom by Angela Ferraro-Fanning is the best book for introducing to younger readers the winter-time. Sometimes considered bored, this time of the year is plenty of great activities outdoor and indoor. Passing through delicious recipes, to the outdoor activity of tapping a tree for making syrup, the book analyzes also the wildlife during the winter-time and how you can help to feed birds during this difficult season. Plenty of great activities for Christmas's Time, I simply know that this book will conquer all the family!

This book is also helping nature becase as remarked, it is printed on recycled paper made from 100% post consumer waste.

Highly recommended.

I thank Netgalley for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

From the Fires of War: Ukraine's Azov Movement and the Global Far Right by Michael Colborne

 From the Fires of War:

Ukraine's Azov Movement and the Global Far Right by Michael Colborne,is a new book released  by Ibidem. An illuminating book this one by Colborne who followed pretty closely these past years Azov: the final analysis, this journalist is specialized on the far right in Eastern Europe is that there is not another movement strong and well connected in the national territory as the Azoz one. In general these movements of extreme right are whispers, and there is not a lot of publicity around them: Azov does the opposite. The movement possesses also publishing houses and it is supported by influential Ukrainians. Books released by their publishing houses are the ones of people of radical right, italians, Germans, it's not important where they are from: it's important the message that they want to communicate. They have published books on Unabomber, for example. 

 

The book opens with some lines of The March of Ukrainian Nationalists written in 1929 and adopted in 1932. 

There is an accurate historical reconstruction of the birth of Ukraine, and its destiny during the centuries. Ukrainians are still looking at the golden period of Cossacks because of that bravery, patriotism. 

The book is divided in six chapters. 

Largely treated the conflict started in 2014,and the role played by the Azov.

I suggest to everyone this reading because it can be understood much better the Ukrainian way of thinking in relationship with other States as well.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Dostoyevski, or the Flood of Language by Julia Kristeva Foreword by Rowan Williams Translated by Jody Gladding

Dostoyevski,

or the Flood of Language by Julia Kristeva Foreword by Rowan Williams Translated by Jody Gladding published by Columbia University Press is an act of love, an homage to Dosto, an author immensely loved  by Julia since her teenage age. Her father asked her to stay distant to Dosto's books, but this imperative to her meant reading all his books, becoming addicted. Why this?

As remarks Williams at the end of his foreword: "We may learn what not many contemporaries can teach us, and what a systematic secularism cannot teach us - something about how desire becomes human,about how speech and storytelling work to humanize our desire, about our fears of murderous absorption and our own murderous resort to abjection in enacting our desire and our terror, about our need for a symbolique that makes space for the recognition of love."

Dosto suffered: realistically and to my point of view, his human sufferance is visible in his books: that's why what experienced in first person sometimes is largely projected in his books. He became epileptic because of a trauma and this illness would have been a shadow and a reflection of his entire production, of his entire being, influencing under many ways, his works.

Reading Dosto means a full immersion in a world populated by many diversified characters and there is a research of truth,of digging deep that it is sometimes shocking.  

His protagonists are not perfect people: yes, some are splendid and understanding, but there are also addicted (he was a gambler as well!), sick, traumatized, desperate, conflictuals, but, for sure, unforgettable, because each character gives his best for being anyway at the reader's eyes, human.

The book will span through topics pretty beloved by Fedor: familiar conflicts, sex, men and women, the role of the mother and the father, parricide, his vision of God: in general Dosto rejected the Catholic church. For many reasons he thought that the best understanding of the real christian spirit passed through the Ordotox Church.

Sex is a controvertial thematic in Dosto: in The Idiot, I hadn't never read it in this way, as Julia does, but simply like an act of great compassion and human touch under many ways, when Prince Myshkin discovers that Rogozhin had killed Filippovna will consolate a devastated Rogozhin. After all, they both loved her.

Kristeva reads the relationship between the two protagonists at the end of the book erotically, not under the lense of compassion. Let's anyway remember that in a part of the book Myshkin told to Rogozhin: My cross will be your cross: and the cross as we all know was Filippovna, a controvertial girl. 

Paedophile acts are permitted and if now the protagonist, Stravogin would be strongly banned, at that time, in the era of Fedor: "Everything was permitted" also abominiums against children: same is for Ivan Karamazov. These deviances were lived as madness, "transition to action or suicide" writes Julia. 

Dosto is an immersion in our subconscious: that's why he was so loved by Freud, because of his penetrating mind: he enters in certain spheres of our soul that remain untouched with other authors: this research is absolutely wanted by the same author for his personal necessities. Fedor simply opens brains figuratively :-) more than any other author permitting to people a full-immersion in central thematics of our existences.

Another book I really enjoyed reading written by Julia Kristeva and that I warmly suggest to all of you25.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Guinea Pig Chronicles by Patricia Maxwell Watts

 The Guinea Pig Chronicles

by Patricia Maxwell Watts published by Matador is a seriously cute and tender children's books, describing the adventures, sad, happy, joyous of the various guinea pigs that the family has had. There is the big adventurer, Fluffy, then Hamish frequently sick: the one named after a health drink made from liquorice and lemons, Jynesse: the owner thought that it was great to contact the company that produced this liquorice, proposing Jynesse as testimonial and can you guess? The little guinea pig could became the focus for their advertising...

Winter arrived for the preparation of Christmas Tree: the final cute stories involve Autumn and Stripey. I have had guinea pigs and I remember them as the cutest animals of all this Earth and perfect animal companions for children.

I warmly suggest to all of you this cute, sweet children's books! Perfect for Christmas!

I thank NetGalley and Matador for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Say a Little Prayer by Joanne Redmond

Say a Little Prayer

by Joanne Redmond is a fabulous book if you search for a daily contact with God.  These times are more than hectics, there are no more certainties and praying God remains sometimes the only option that we have. Divided in many sections, for presenting you inspiration, prayer is not just seen as an aspect that must be observed in particular in the morning and evening: you will discover that you can continue to pray God in every moment of your day, asking little and big things, being inspired by HIM. 

I found the book friendly and close to the exigences of people.

I love these kind of books because they present calm and relaxation and a healthy contact with a Divinity that in many cases we don't see but we can feel close.

Highly recommended book.

I thank Netgalley for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Senza Respiro by David Quammen

 Senza Respiro

by David Quammen published by Adelphi is dedicated to the relatives of people passed away because of the pandemic. 

Written in a captivating style, it's, for sure an unputtable down book in particular if you are interested in the topic: viruses, first of all, and yes, Covid-19, and then research: you will understand reading this book, that the reconstruction of a virus's genesis is complicated and fascinating: that sometimes is necessary to travel in the most diversified corners of the world, forests, deserts, capturing segments of poo, pee or just blood of wild animals for later in laboratory trying to see which answers that animals can give. Risking the existences.

Reading the genomic version of Covid-19 meant real panic, because, understandably, scientists understood that yes, this one potentially could become a new pandemic: certain weird segments of the sequence meant to scientists online meetings: yes the famous theory of the virus escaped from a laboratory in China was taken in consideration and... 

No, the story was more simple: there was a natural spillover: pangolins helped the spillover probably, but no one can say the final word. Sure, where, and when this spillover became more cruent and didn't abandon anymore the body of humans is still unclear. Of course we know that the first outbreak, largely known where everything officially started was Wuhan, China and in the market of Huanan but...

What appeared clear later was that the virus circulated silently without that the humanity knew anything of it, from fall 2019 before to become officially, notoriously known: it circulated not just in China, but also in Italy, France etc. Scientists, doctors, people working in laboratories understood it more clearly when, with the discovery of the pandemic, decided to repeat some tests that they had kept jealously in laboratory on patients passed to the hospital months before, and where it was impossible to establish a real diagnosys, discovering that some of them were sick with Covid in fall 2019. 

There is an historical reconstruction of what various countries decided to do during the pandemic: the first european country involved in the pandemic was Italy: the first wave of Covid caused more or less 34.000 victims. 

In the UK with Boris Johnson like also in Brazil with Bolsonaro and in the USA with Donald Trump, Covid was treated as an absent problem. In the USA because of economy, in the UK because they wanted to reach a heard himmunity: someone in an interview clarified that they were searching for it. Oh my, but departures will be a lot, replied the journalist. The politician: yes this one is a bad illness....Bolsonaro didn't suggest any kind of measures and Covid, as it happened in UK as well, happily created, thanks to its frenetic work in bodies a new variant!

According to the british politician the 60% of population had to fall sick and then voilà! the herd himmunity.

Follow the chapters where the author reveals why the research of this method is not a solution to the problem. There is an interesting story behind herd himmunity. And, anyway, being a virus with the capacity of mutation, you can catch it several times. So a herd himmunity shouldn't be researched also for this reason.

Follow also the explanation of what Coronaviruses are in comparison to other viruses taken in consideration and why they are so temibles. 

Viruses are indispensibles for our existence, affirms David and it is not possible an existence without them. Their birth is suggestive, you will discover it.

But...Where are we now with the pandemic?

The most scaring mutation although less dangerous than the previous ones (and these next months we are ready for other variants) is from South Africa: Omicron. 

What will happen of Covid? It won't disappear anymore, writes Quammen: we have deleted from the Humanity perils like smallpox, but it won't be possible to do the same with this virus and we still can't say what it will become affirms Quammen. The trasmissibility is not just human. This virus interacts well with animals as well.

An example? The cutest one!

Pagani, a young researcher of tropical illnesses,  30 years, changed his existence, preferring to stay in loco thanks to the suggestion of Massimo Gallo an estimated professor of the Sacco of Milan. During the first pandemic wave, so, while he was testing people, catched Covid, and the other one who fell sick with him was not his girlfriend or parents but his lovely cat Zika. Yes, he called the cat Zika! He discovered that the animal sneezed frequently: they both were tested and they had the same Covid-19, equal at the 99% of the genomic sequence.

As you can see it will be difficult a complete disappearance of Covid-19. Covid-19 is in love with several mammals. How can we defeat it? It's not possible.

Beautiful book, written with great clarity. If you know someone interested in the topic, it's a perfect Christmas gift because well documented: first-hand interviews with the biggest names of the scientific field are punctuals. Accuracy is researched everywhwere and every passage explained with competence.

Anna Maria Polidori