Vecchie Noiose by Gaia de Beaumont

It's a funny book Vecchie Noiose

by Gaia de Beaumont. This book published by Marsilio portrays a village populated only by very old people. These people live the last period of their existence in the most extravagant ways: there is who is still searching for sex, finding satisfaction thanks to the young boy of the crematory, all happy and joyous when he can transforms his place of work in an occasion for some wild sex with elderly ladies, or with a strange man apparently a sort of playboy; there is the old lady absolutely in war with his son, a pretty sad person who is fighting with her mother from a life, anxious of trying to better his existence and being less stressed; there is who enjoy to watch on TV every sorta of shows, reality; who lose tooth somewhere; deaf, or with problems of mobility, unsatisfied, memories runs here and there. 

The arrival of Maria Gioconda a young person in the 60s so in comparison with most of them still a girl will be for some of these ladies reasons of curiosity.

Maria Gioconda didn't live a great existence. Yes, she was lucky with work; most of her existence spent at the post office located in the North of Italy, she assisted both her parents and now that they are both gone the decision of spending the rest of her time in a sunniest place with the sun everyday of the year.

The arrival and the discovery of this high percentage of old people will be seen surprisingly, although Maria Gioconda will tyr her best for being accepted and welcomed.

The end of this book is pretty shocking because decisions will be taken, and some existences of these characters in a way or another will change forever.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova

A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova

translated from Russian by Barbara Heldt and published by Columbia University Press is enchanting.

Pavlova was a famous although pretty unlucky and misunderstood writer and poet. She lived in 1800s and A Double Life was written in 1844-1845. 

Feminist, she married Nicholai Pavolov but their wedding wasn't just unhappy; once she was forced to leaving her country, her son and family. 

Although permeated by this disgraceful condition, poor and without friends Pavlova found great intensity in poetry and literature, appearing to the other ones pretty cold, because happy with this new existence. 

Pavlova couldn't accept the simplicistic role of women and their sad destiny as structured in the Russian society: becoming wife soon or late of someone, trapped in unhappy marriages, most of the times, and symbolically in cage. 

Karolina thought that there was another way of life. A woman like a man is a creature with thoughts, passions, desires, and the same fact that being born women meant to be repressed by men was, to her, unacceptable. 

A double Life is symbolically a title that explains also the book and what you will find inside. 

The same structure of the book is a double work of fiction for representing to my point of view the apparently beautiful condition of women and what there was behind: but also the duplicity of people and their role played in this story as you will read. For this reason the first part of every chapter, ten in total, and pretty briefs is written in prose. In this case the protagonist, Cecily 18 years during the day appears as a remissive, happy, sunny girl after all, dominated by events, friends, her mother and circumnstances of life. In the night, where creativity becomes more wild, so, in the second part of every chapter she appears as a thinker, as someone who wouldn't want to be constricted at taking decisions that she wouldn't want to take, thinking at the meaning of life.

She knows perfectly well, considering that she is rich, pretty, that soon or late she will become the wife of someone but she is unhappy. 

You won't never read the unhappiness of Cecily in the prose, if not in the words of friends and neighbors invited at the wedding. In the prose there is just the social condition where Cecily lived in, teas, events, her birthdays, time spent with her friends. 

You will discover in the poems, the highest concentration of sadness, restlessness, anxiety, unhappiness but at the same time beautiful soul of this girl. 

What scared Cecily the most, and so the author, was losing her personal freedom not just like a woman but as an individual, trapped in a society where it didn't exist any kind of escapism, where it didn't exist any possibility for building, choosing by herself the best for her existence.

Maybe Cecily for the rest of her existence will be forced to live a double life or as it happened to the author, she would have probably re-started her existence somewhere else.

The prose is a clear and a serious portrait of the Russian upper clas society of 1800s . 

I promised to myself of reading more of this author, for the enchanting words she uses, and for the profoundity of feelings expressed, with clarity, touching, with extreme elegance the most profound chords of the existence.

One of the passages in poem

It is in me your soul believes,

Me that you love, not him.

But in the midst of changing vanity

In your routine of every day,

I will remain an unclear sadness,

A dream of the heart unrealized.

And sensing light in the depths of gloom,

Trusting in an unheartly secret,

You will travel from ghost to ghost,

from one sorrow to another.

.....

Highly recommended.

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

Chronicles of Old Rome Exploring Italy's Eternal City by Tamara Thiessen

Chronicles of Old Rome Exploring Italy's Eternal City by Tamara

Thiessen is a great and stunning homage to a city that is immensely wonderful. I miss Rome so badly. When I was little it was the city where I spent my summer-times and where with my aunt Nena we loved to visit the most. Rome is romantic, but at the same time is like a matron, a big mom for everyone who wants to join her. She is liek the warmest hug of a mom, she is tender and she invites you at eating, enjoying life and what it offers.

This new guide by Museyon Books starts the long trip of Rome from its foundation and the so-called Lupa di Roma, Romulus, the seven hills, the creation of the city on april 21 753 BC.

The story of Caesar, veni vidi vici: “I came, I saw, I conquered"; seems he conquered 300 nations and 800 cities, and defeated 3 million men; then you will meet Cicero and later Caligula with the Vatican Obelisk.

I am more than sure that you will fall captivated by the story of Nero and the big fire of Rome and shocked by the history and beauty of Caracalla at that time the thermae of the city.

Personally, I watched there Il Barbiere di Siviglia directed by Carlo Verdone many summers ago. You breath a sensation of freedom, of peace when you are there. At the moment Caracalla is known for his shows during the summer-time where ballets and opera are mixed together for the joy of local people and tourists of all the world.

You will discover the story of the Colusseum with a special story; the book will define the portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, the last name says all, but you'll also discover the genial magnificence of the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo.

It's impossible to forget the enchanting Villa Farnesina and what the post-Renaissance period brought to us: Caravaggio with his torments and paintings sometimes brutals.

For a long long time Rome was one of the favorite cities visited by foreigners during the Grand Tour. I remember Goethe, the romantic writer, a real estimator of Italy. My beloved poet John Keats spent in Rome the final days of his young, tormented and brief existence.

Rome has also been the theater, the set, of a famous opera by Giacomo Puccini, Tosca. The Tiber-side Castel Sant’Angelo, Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, and Palazzo Farnese the locations.

Mussolini meant 20 and more years of regime. There are still traces and buildings that you can visit where he shared his ideology with folk, but also monuments erected while still in power.

If you want to live your days in Rome romantically why not visiting all the places of the set with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in the movie Vacanze Romane or The Fountain of Trevi remembering Three Coins in a Fountain or La Dolce Vita?

The book ends with a lot of interesting walks for all tastes!

Highly recommended.

I thank Myseyon Books for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Circus Comes to the Village by Yutaka Kobayashi

The Circus Comes to the Village by

Yutaka Kobayashi is a new children's book published by Museyon Books. It is a sad and true story,about war, future, new beginning and the end of a place.

We are in Afghanistan, in a little, tiny agricultural village where existence knows the circularity of seasons, and where agriculture and hard work are the reality met everyday by people.The beginning of the end started with the arrival of a circus in a close village. There is an endless war in Afghanistan.

Yamo and Mirado are great friends and once completed the hard work in the field their relatives approve the decision of the two children of going to see the Circus as a moment of relaxation.

Children are electrified by the perspective. Mirado loves to sing a flute left behind bu his dad, who once went to the war and since then no one have news of his destiny. He feels a great melancholy and he hopes that singing soon or late he can re-appears in his existence.

Circus for children is wonderful because thereis just projection of joy, happiness, of joyous and sunny, funny moments. It is what happens to Mirado and Yamo as well. They try various different games, they assist at wonderful shows, 'till at the moment that a beautiful lady makes her appearance on stage. Mirado starts to sing with his flute and everyone is surprised by his talent. People in the circus asks him if he wants to join them. Considering everything, Mirado is alone, her grand-mother accepts this decision and set free Mirado, blessing his decision.

Good-byes are sad but there is till hope of finding somewhere while singing his flute Mirado's dad. After that Mirado left, he was a good omen for the area, everything changed; the arrival of war, and other problems created a situation impossible to resist and people abandoned that place going all somewhere else.

Another book pretty delicate where adults and children will dialogue at long, I guess.

What will happen to Mirado? Will he be happy with his new large family? Will he find his dad while singing his flute? Will he never meet again Yamo and all his friends and relatives left behind? Your kid would want to abandon you for joining a circus? And you as a parent or relative would permit him to do that?

Then there is the meaning of war and. What does mean to living in a place completely devastated by hate, blood and human losses everyday?

Why peace is so precious?

What kind of meaning of life is it important to find in these situations and conditions?

Losing the house where a person maybe lived for a long time because of war and lack of food can be traumatic. What do you think of this passage?

They're big questions and thematic these ones, left, completely left in your hands and eyes dear reader, little or big that you are.

Beautiful and melancholic, this book is dedicated to all the children of Afghanistan with the hope of a new peace and a new future one day.

Highly recommended.

I thank Museyon Books for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Journalism Under Fire Protecting the Future of Investigative Journalism by Stephen Gillers

Journalism Under Fire Protecting the Future of Investigative Journalism

by Stephen Gillers offers a clear and worrying account of what it is going on in American Journalism and investigative journalism, where just a niche of newsmagazines, see at the voice Boston Globe with its team Spotlight and the investigation about the abuse of wagons of paedophile priests, 300, in Boston opened a problem in the Catholic Church or the Washington Post and their  Watergate. 

First of all let's start to define what is the press. In the first Amendment of the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."

The Founding Fathers admitted something peculiar: that the freedom of speech is a prerogative of a healthy state. A country where you can't speak with freedom and joy, where you can't express yourself and where you can't say what you think of situations for fear of repercussions on your person is not a great place where to live in. Absolutely.

Let's see what says the Press Clause: that no one should never reduce the power of the freedom of the press.

Journalism in the USA has always been a great and healthy reality. Recently some worrying wild winds changed a bit this situation: from few decades reporters, journalists became  more "intersected" with big powers and less free than not in the past. Another worrying problem for a journalist that should remain independant. 

But who is a journalist in the USA? A watchdog and someone who should be part of that checks and balances so important for the healthy system of the nation. A guardian of the system and of all the powers existing in the country; at any level. 

Reporting news, without fear or without political or economical powers behind in grade of changing the rules of the game is indispendible for keeping healthy a country and for giving an honest account of what it is going on.

Said that, of course it's not said that the journalist musn't express his/her own opinion. It is indispensible to express worries, or looking at the reality with the eyes of the experience accumulated and existence lived.

After all a reporter is a man or a woman marked by his/her own life and not an historian.

Big or little newsmagazines or magazine must tend to have political inclinations more or less marked, but in a healthy political system this one shouldn't be a problem at all but a resource for uncerstanding much better the reality.

In the USA are classified journalists, so that they can asks for the Press Clause in case of a litigation or defamation, all that people who can prove that with their work, they could be bloggers, they could be video-makers, etc are creating news. 

The new reality, quickest respect to the past is more fragmented and confused and sometimes old habits broken by the net. Which ones? Reading very long pieces of a magazine was appreciated and it presented calm to the reader and a moment of relaxation. The net created with the time a compulsory situation where news are given every second, sometimes in brief shape and so it is becoming always more unnecessary reading long pieces, losing a lot in term also of the so-called deep-thinking.

The book treats largely the use of sources and protection of sources, explaining with cases from the past what the judiciary system said regarding various cases taken in consideration.

Journalists in fact, if they can't be classified part of the system are not out of the system and they answer, when there is a controvertial case to the judiciary system.

A wonderful book, colloquial, for everyone.

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

Notre-Dame by Ken Follett

I remember well where I was on April 15 2019 when the Cathedral of NotreDame was burning. I went to the mass celebrated in our little church at 7 o'clock. I stopped by once the mass was over for sending some vocal messages to my aunt.

Returned home, while my mother was asking me informations about the mass I noticed the breaking news. Notre-Dame was burning. It was simply shocking.

Months later rhey asked for donations and I made my little donations.Just few bucks. "With my money they can buy just a sack of cement, I am afraid, but it's a something" I told to a neighbor, who, in the past, emigrated to Paris, and worked in Notre-Dame as well. That gesture meant my desire of seeing again the center of the Christianity back to life.

When today I went to the COOP supermarket of my city, Gubbio, I visited the area dedicated to books. 

One of them captured my attention: Notre-Dame

by Ken Follett.

Follett donates all the money of this new book, royalties and copyright included, to the Fondation du Patrimoine for the rebuilding of the cathedral. It's also for this reason that I decided of buying this book. Being a reviewer I could have asked for a free copy to the publushing house, but I think that each of us, considering that the book costs 7,65 euros can spend that soum of money for contributing at the re-birth of Notre-Dame.

I started to read the book, completely lost, at the supermarket, ending it at home.

It's a quick and lovely reading. Follett is clear, precise, emphatic. 

I know what it means to start to read one of his books and then not putting it down 'till the end. 

He loves to share with his readers what he felt at first when he heard, thanks to a common old friend, the news that no one wanted to hear: that Notre-Dame was burning, describing what it meant that moment to him, a non-believer plenty of fascination for these incredible buildings. Private feelings, but public as well, because being the writer of the saga of The Pillars, (beautiful, fascinating books, it seems to staying there with the protagonists) he started to receiving that same evening calls from various reporters.

Follett says something absolutely true and absolutely lost in our society: once, when a cathedral was built, everyone, from the masters to the latest worker believed in the project and  wanted to build something not just immense but everlasting. And every little or big particular was important. There wasn't poverty of details, because Cathedrals needed to be spectacularly rich, precious to the eyes of everyone; in its immensity, you understand the beauty of a big church, of a cathedral by the entire whole. A cathedral is a place where love existed for sure in the process of making. 

A cathedral is loved, appreciated; work meant dedication, considering also that the project involves a sacred place; for the future pilgrims a complete adoration and satisfaction because they will still can "feel" that love, the love of creation and for creation of a masterpiece; that "not being satisfied" of the little, but of the best; there was the desire of giving a face through a Cathedral at the human semblance of God; and they did it passing through the work of masters, the hands of workers of every genre.

Every century, every age, tell stories of God. This moment is not the happiest one for our religion to my point of view considering the ugliness of new churches, too modern and impersonals.

This book will tell you not just the story of that day, but also a vivid, quick but felt portrait of Notre-Dame from its foundation, to the decision in 1163 of a fresh start. A fresh start that would have meant 100 years of works, changes in various phases, thanks to new inspirations born in the mind of the various masters.

Victor Hugo maybe the most stunning writer of the past for his vibrant intensity of feelings but also for his profound compassion for everyone, in particular the latest ones, protested vibrantly for the poor condition of Notre-Dame after that, once  the monarchy over, the regime of Robespierre could not take in serious consideration Notre-Dame. Englightment produced also horrific results.

Considering that Victor Hugo was taken in serious consideration because a beloved author and a wise man, authority decided of doing something.

This book is also wonderful because if you want to read much more.

Ken Follett put you in condition to do that, suggesting books, of course his Pillars, but also all the rest of production that inspired Cathedrals, not just Notre-Dame.

An intelligent project and as the author said he wishes to be part of the rebuilding of Notre-Dame.

I hope that all his readers and newest, curious ones, will buy this book for discovering more about Notre-Dame, what it means for French people and the rest of Europeans and the importance of donating. This money goes directly to the Fondation. You know that and for rebuilding the Cathedral. 

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Full Hearts and Empty Bellies A 1920s Childhood from the Forest of Dean to the Streets of London by Winifred Foley

I was putting in order my numerous books days ago when I spotted this one: Full Hearts and Empty Bellies

A 1920s Childhood from the Forest of Dean to the Streets of London by Winifred Foley. I ordered this book years ago and then I put it aside. As I do often I post-poned for a reason or another the reading.

Reading this book days ago meant to remember again what my dad told to me, about the 1920s. Years of great poverty, where their bellies weren't plenty at all but where there were great sentiments and people were much more connected with everyone else. There wasn't anything, money didn't exist and just few families had that; people simply loved to staying together, enjoying the company of neighbors. If they needed something, they exchanged for example eggs with flour. 

The story of ms Foley is similar. She grew up in a numerous family, where birthdays didn't have any kind of importance, (I know people in their 80s that don't know exactly the day they were born for example; it was common) and where birthday dates were just three: iconics passages of the existence; once arrived at 14 years for a girl meant  leaving the house for becoming an housemaid somewhere in London for example.

There wasn't sufficient food for all that children but no one would have shared this information to their neighbors (although I guess that they knew that) and when their mother was in grade of feeding them abundantly and with something delicious, this fact was seen as a miracle and a great feast.

The village was divided in sections; the richest and the poorest part.

School, during that hard years was helpful because everyday they passed to all children something to eat and it meant, in particular to the children of the poorest part of the town a big and appreciated novelty because that food was delicious and robust.

Also the chapel where they loved to share their times tried to help little children, feeding them.

Memories of Winifred speaks also of her times to school; her friends, people she appreciated the most and the ones she disliked for a reason or another; her passion for religion at some point; there are beautiful chapters, real portraits in words of her mother, her dad, her beloved great-aunt Lizzie, with a personal history that is simply incredible and fantastic. The story touched me the most was the part when Lizzie died.

Winifred Foley shared with us the story of Nancy, their little pig, killed later for being eaten. Considering that was part of their family, sometimes she had the impression of eating the meat of a real family-member.

The second part is dedicated to London, the arrival in the city, various difficulties experienced. It's a real life, a real story and a portrait of a generation of people that trust me, I adore so badly, because opened, generous, wonderfully kind and plenty of good and important values.

Anna Maria Polidori