The Complete Book of Calligraphy & Lettering A comprehensive guide to more than 100 traditional calligraphy and hand-writing techniques by Cari Ferraro, Eugene Metcalf, Arthur Newhall, John Stevens

I confess: I picked up The Complete Book of Calligraphy & Lettering A

comprehensive guide to more than 100 traditional calligraphy and hand-writing techniques by Cari Ferraro, Eugene Metcalf, Arthur Newhall, John Stevens for a review because I am a letter-writer, but my handwriting is horrible :-)

This book will teach you everything you want to know for better your handwriting. It starts by pens, pencils and material that we use for writing that sometimes as we will learn, can makes the difference.

This book then focuses on various styles, and each letter appears as "animated" to you and ready to be discovered in all its potentialities.

If you are an enthusiastic calligrapher, this book is for you!

Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Quarto for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Forgiving Jar by Wanda E. Brunstetter

The Forgiving Jar

by Wanda E. Brunstetter is a new book released soon by Barbour Press. We are back in the existences of Michelle, Sara and the wonderful elderly couple  in the person of Mary Ruth and Willis Lapp.

The couple if you remember the first book I previously treated and reviewed lost their daughter, and they learned this thanks to a letter sent by Sara, the daughter of their daughter, disappeared too many years ago without to let them know anymore what happened to her.

Sara after all has a good existence, but curiosity is great and the desire of trying to understand a world like the one of Amish so distant by her reality is immense. Her mother never told her that in a past phase of her existence she was an Amish.

The Lapps are at the same time extremely sad and excited. Sad because they lost their beloved daughter, but happy for the possibility of discovering this new important member of their family. They tell her that they would have met her with pleasure.

But my favorite character is the one of Michelle. Michelle lived in a disgraceful family, her boyfriend was horrible, she was homeless, no job, desperate she didn't know where to go, and when she meets this nice elderly couple asking her if she was their niece Sara, Michelle answers: yes.

Without exhitation.

For this girl, surrounded just by internal and external confusion, where there was just chaos, disorder, violence, the Lapps meant not the Paradise: more.

Good food, a family where love and friendship were visible, someone in grade of appreciating people, Michelle felt she loved immensely to staying there.

This new book focuses on the arrival of Michelle, again in the Lapps' house, this time with her name and last name Taylor for the Thanksgiving and the one of Sara. Yes, in the previous book the story was, after all, discovered.

The Lapps understood that desperation was high and the possibility of a good nest for Michelle where resting mind and body adding some good hard work and prayers was a good conclusion.

They understood her desperation. Sara at first, in this book doesn't. She thinks that maybe she is again there for opportunism; she doesn't love her grand-parents but who knows why she is there.

While Michelle is genuinily not just in love for the Lapps, her adoptive Amish family but also for that life, that she will choice of not lose anymore.

Ezekiel is the boyfriend of Michelle, while Brad in the first book attracted by Michelle/Sara maybe will start to flirt with Sara...

The jars are not so central in the story after all, because these girls will experience a lot; also the departure of a beloved domestic animal, the joy of meeting someone never seen in their existence, new jobs, friendships and meetings. A marriage and other stories will follow but what it is for sure, these jars and the Lapps will help these girls in their new path and their new existence.

A memorable story this one. Altruistic people are in grade to better the world.

I know you'll love this book. It can't be different. Wanda is in grade to speak directly to the heart of people with simplicity, accuracy and great tenderness and understanding.

I thank NetGalley and Barbour for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Printed Letter Bookshop by Katherine Reay

The Printed Letter Bookshop is a fascinating book written by Katherine Reay(The Jane Austen Escape) about a funeral of an eccentric character, a legacy and a bookshop.

It is not uncommon that when bookshop owners are close to the end they need to find someone who, in love for books won't decide of selling, changing activity once they die. Books are a story of love and if people don't understand it, it can be the end.

Surely the eccentric, called also "crazy" - by Madeline s dad- aunt of Madeline, Maddie, must have thought this, when, close to the end decides of leaving all her possessions, bookshop included at her niece Madeline.

Madeline is not exactly in this business created romantically decades before by Maddie and Pete, her beloved husband.

The name of the bookshop appears singular but there is an explanation. This lady created a lot of joy in people thanks to the fact that she shared with people a lot of books. It meant that these people became readers and most of them did not forget Maddie, and so with the time she received a lot of thank-you letters.

If Maddie wouldn't have been around maybe people wouldn't never started to read. So, when they created the bookshop, to Maddie important to call it shop, and not store for giving an idea of more simplicity and warm, the letters needed to be included.

All of them; close to them notes of Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

Claire and Janet, very well defined characters are the historical shopgirls and one of them took also great care of the latest moments of Maddie; a bookshop is a place where friendship are cemented and people in general are not just customers.

They love to spend time with shop girls and the bookshop s owner ; and they are helped by them; sometimes shopgirls, these ones mature, were ladies (one in particular) who at first searched this place because in grade of presenting warm and security. Shopgirls are the soul of a bookshop: they suggest titles, help readers in search of something new and exciting or the best classics for the season.

The arrival of Madeline - and not only - will create some frictions at first, because her new idea of launching a big sell during the Christmas Time and when in general people tend to read less for restoring the not florid economical situation of the bookshop left by auntie Maddie for later selling the bookshop in Spring, without to count the entrance of social medias will be a change.

But after all, with a lot of intricate, funny, romantic situations, who knows if Madeline, who in the while discovers, living in the house of auntie Maddie a lot of affinities with her  beloved relative, will sell the bookshop?

Tender story, pretty crowded, with a lot of book suggestions for every possibile tastes, if you love books, every chapter is narrated in first person. Janet, Madeline, Claire...Beauty.

I thank NetGalley for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Postal Culture Writing and Reading Letters in Post-Unification Italy by Gabriella Romani

It is a romantic and old-fashioned book this one Postal Culture Writing and Reading Letters in Post-Unification Italy by Gabriella Romani, published by University of Toronto Press.

I was intrigued by this book at first because I have always been an avid letter-writer, but I absolutely didn't know anything of the creation of the italian postal system and for what I read it was an enchanting moment for Italy.

Written with devotion whoever will be interested to discover something more about our old postal system and correspondence, passing through books that made the history of italian literature will be more thth enchanted by this book. 

Italy was divided in several many States before the unification of 1861 completed in 1870. Since there there were in Italy many postal systems, of the various Italian Reigns; the most efficient ones based in North of Italy.

The new Postal Sytem unified made people curious regarding letters, postcards, a new way of communication that would have also passed through the same State; from North to South of Italy everyone would have sent the same letter passing through the same postal system.

The place needed to be unified, language included and why not starting with letters and postcards?

If Manzoni the writer of I Promessi Sposi and the writer we must thanks because he unified our language complained because to him postal system was not efficient, writing to a contact in France, there's to say that also people not too much educated and with a little scholarization started to write down letters for staying in touch with parents, relatives and friends who lived distantly, also thanks to our economic postal rates of all Europe promoted by italian postal system. At the moment Italy lives one of the most expensive postal rates of all Europe for postcards and letters.  

With the time as you will read flourished also various kinds of manuals explaining to people how to write a good letter, for various diverisfied occasions.

As it happened in the past there was also somewhere the character of  the letter-writer, the person, who, for hobby, or for a little amount of money read and answered back letters received by people. People searcging for a letter writer could be analphabet or not too secure of his-her written italian and preferred the help of someone more acculturate. 

I remember that everyone told me my granny Marietta was the letter-writer of our area and our house plenty of people when during the last Second World War, relatives received letters from their young men in war in the most diversified places.

She was the only one who had completed all the elementary school because born in another area; she started to live here when she married my grand-dad-

In our territory no one invested in culture and elementary school in the 1940s counted only in the first three years. It was implied that children would have become peasants.

A curiosity I didn't know that the past Postal System was a poetic place where there was also a suggestive, poetic postal calendar at the end of every year for people. Identity of post offices passed also through this important instrument, very beauty with precious illustrations.

An important literary works involving epistolary genre was La Storia di Una Capinera by Giovanni Verga, great esponent of the so-called Italian Verism.

The story this one

Maria is forced to enter in a convent for becoming a nun without too many compliments as also happened to La Monaca di Monza by Manzoni with other results. Maria didn't want to become a nun but her dad a widow remarried a lady and he had to think at the other two daughters. The end is very unhappy, but the book was a great success thanks also to the great power of letter-writing and a style considered absolutely true and felt.

The book  continues with the analysis of Matilde Serao's epistolary fiction.

I find this book adorable and if you love Italy, if you miss your country so much, if you want to know what it meant at first the creation of the Italian Postal System or just for curiosity goes for this book. It is written with love and great competency. I also at first found this book curious because bilingual. It was great reading it in Italian and english.  Beautiful. 

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

No phone line and other problems

Christmas means snow in our area. I am still without phone line: everything started with the snow fell on Dec 17th

Anna Maria

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

May you spend a wonderful, peaceful and blessed Holiday.

Anna Maria Polidori

My Brilliant Friend, L'Amica Geniale TV series by Saverio Costanzo

I can just treat My Brilliant Friend, L'Amica Geniale TV  series by Saverio Costanzo  because I am waiting for the italian or maybe American copy of the first book of the series.

This TV series is, for viewers, plenty of interesting reflections and considering that it is strictly connected with the books let's try to examine some of the most crucial points.

The series is amazing, touching, plenty of poeticity inserted in a difficult situation for the protagonists. The soundtrack is divine.

There are a lot of disturbing  situations, it is true, but the friendship of these girlfriends is wonderfully well reported and told. The narrator, Elena, gives her best, for trying to define in all its possible shades the beauty of her friendship with Lila.

Let's see the most important thematic.

Friendship: a friendship in grade to survive per decades.
It's not just important and precious this aspect marked with emphasis; it's a rare existential aspect. I knew just the case of my cousin still in contact with a schoolmate for more than 40 years.
Often, it is impossible between two girlfriends, because people change; they change cities and where they don't change cities, or places, they just don't tend of staying connected anymore and sometimes it's much better.

These girls, Lila and Elena, feel attraction because opposite characters and so their friendship continues endlessly.

If Elena is an introvert and delicate girl not too much creative, Lila, black hair, is a brilliant intelligence and a real fearless warrior with strong opinions and a strong character; profound eyes in grade to penetrate other people's soul, ironic and sardonic, Elena sees in Lila the other part of her; the bold one, the one in grade of completing her.
Lila, at the same time, finds in Elena a stimulating friend for learning much more; Elena is a calm creature, someone with a life less complicated than the one of Lila; someone with which to share and experience some moment of relaxation and normality.

Similar families, the one of Elena is more open in terms of education after elementary and mid-term school.

Elena attends in fact after the mid-term schools the Liceo Classico where the girl studies Greek and Latin. This, after strong discussions in her family and thanks to the pressures of Elena and Lila's elementary teacher.

Lila, hunger for knowledge and much more intelligent than Elena starts to read as many books as possible and she understands more than Elena the meaning of Greek myths and topics, but not for competing with her, but because she knows that these topics are attracting and they deserve her attention. She does want to follow her friend also in this new adventure.

After all, in other conditions, she also would have attended the Liceo Classico without to going to work immediately in the store of her family where they makes artisan shoes.

There is sufferance in Lila but also the knowledge, thanks to her hard soul, that the reality is that one; she knows that life is the one she is living in, and there is nothing to do. She knows that her destiny won't be simple and she fights for searching, where she can, and without illusions, that beauty that the literary world presents her. In the third episodes we noticed that Lila abandons the reading, because unnecessary to her daily life.

The two friends when more little, read and re-read Little Women by Alcott many times. They wish to be real and new Jo March; they dream to write a book, telling their own story, with their own voice.

But life is complicated.

Another thematic that the TV series and I guess the book treats is the one of books; books in houses, libraries, everywhere and the importance of reading as instrument of personal growth.

Now: I don't think that everyone can understand this point, truly profound, of L'Amica Geniale if born in places where books are available and they are the normality and not weird creatures seeing with a lot of suspects.

If for people of culture books are normal, you must know that, in houses without books, the normality is that one and books are strangers, and creatures not well seen, sometimes, by adults.

A kid or a teenager who will fight against the entire family because he/she wants to read will meet a lot of problems, because probably born in a social tissue where books are not contemplated and so not "understood:" books are considered by many a damage for the grown of the kid or teenager. I have personally seen teenagers who gave up to reading because parents opposed strong resistance.

Poverty: the base of all it's poverty.
Poverty means sacrifices and buying books is not a joke. Money is necessary for other important voices in the daily life of these families.

The TV series launches various messages in this sense; the use of used books thanks to the massive visit to libraries; the gentle teacher who shares her old classics books with Elena for example for being read during her summer vacations in Ischia; money is not spent and children continue to read and understand reality.
At the moment it's possible to find other modalities for reading at a cheapest price than not in the past.

The families portrayed in L'Amica Geniale or The Brilliant Friend are from a poor rione of Naples.
There is in this sense a certain fatalism regarding life. Life can't be changed, life remains the same experienced by the ancestors and it is better to continue in that way.

The beauty of this TV series to me is this moment of rebellion: two girls Elena and Lilu discover books and culture.

The possibility of seeing under other perspectives the reality that they are living in is a privilege.

No one must search for books  for trying to understand the profound meaning of this world or maybe for being saved by this world. In general writers and creatives are writers and creatives because they fight against personal demons.
Said it, it's not that: books are something else.

Lila for example can't be saved by the young mobster of the rione who wants to marry her; Elena will experience the sad repugnant attentions of a vicious ugly man; good books and for extension culture will give the possibility of seeing reality as if lived into a kaleidoscope, trying to understand what happened, reading facts with a different profundity.

Personally I found hard the first episode of the series, because I would want to see childhood protected; protected by sadness, by horrible facts, a land where all children would stay happy and cheerful, but this one is a fairy-tale, because in certain areas or our country or the world children lose their right to be children pretty soon.

I absolutely hate the obstinacy of the dad of Lila; his desire of marrying her with someone Lila doesn't love at all is pure cruelty; I personally love  these girls, because in their differences they are unique and they permeate the other one in a splendid way. When Elena confesses to Lila she wrote some thoughts Lila had previously expressed to her while they were talking one day and she received an A at school, she told her that for let her know that to her she is like an extension of her soul, someone she admires so badly because of her originality. The uniqueness of her girlfriend is a constant in her existence.


Anna Maria Polidori