Il Tribunale degli Uccelli FugleTribunalet by Agnes Ravatn

Il Tribunale degli Uccelli FugleTribunalet by Agnes Ravatn published

• by Marsilio is a powerful book for sure, because will act psychologically and at different levels on the readers. If you have a certain imagination you will notice it. Plus this tale will also put in evidence the profound and distorted relationship of a sick person in confrontation with women.

While I was reading this book I thought that I would have run away as soon as possible from a guy like Sigurd Bagge being extremely talkative; that man was so closed that you had to pay attention at what you said him and the way you said that, words you used for expressing your thoughts couldn't be wrong and so on. Just this a real nightmare!

The story: Allis is an important TV presenter, but she cheated her husband with someone more powerful. People discovered in a pretty devastating way their relationship. She escaped away; without husband, technically Allis is still married of course but... without lover; without anyone.

Without anymore a good reputation and she is jobless, of course. One day he reads that someone needs a housemaid for cooking, keeping clean the garden, the house. Allis thinks that maybe, leaving the city, leaving her old life will be just reason for bettering her emotional situation.

Sure: that house is isolated, that man, all alone in the house a sort of bear. A 40s year old bear, absolutely attractive but at the same time with something wrong in his heart; he doesn't love to communicate at all; he doesn't love to interact with Allis.

Allis tries her best. She doesn't know gardening but slowly she improves; she discovers a notebook with a lot of recipes in the kitchen and she will cook always great meals.

The man is married but the lady is strangely disappeared somewhere. Allis is curious to understand where Bagge's wife disapperead developing at the same time a sort of jealousy for this mysterious lady. A lady, surely with a lot of qualities. A musician.

She imagines her tiny, slim body; her class and grace.

What Allis doesn't know is the profound attachment of Bagge for wine and liquors in general. Allis, there is to add, will be of great company in this sense.

I consider Bagge a bipolar person; someone absolutely not in grade of understanding the dynamics of life; the dynamics not just of unhappiness, but the ones of happiness as well. Bagge would want an exclusive, quiet total control on the other person, something that no one should have. Not in this sick way.

The rural life is beautiful and the imagine portraid by Allis, a life spent with him 'till the end (maybe in a too isolated way also if the relationship an healthy one) absolutely rational: the problem is that when there are people like Bagge around, you can't never know what they think and when they can break also the most beautiful moment of happiness.

I thought: why a man became a complication for others so big? Was it because of his childhood? Because of a unhappy past?

The result of the actions of Bagge can't be circumscribed "in the now," but in a past of desolation, in a past where no one took great care for this ex kid; or just, it is part of his human nature, his abuse of alcohol, a constant unhappiness, a constant being unsecure of himself and the other ones; his inability of giving trust to anyone, and his inability of believing in what others are saying him with open hearts and sincerity.

It's the normality that becomes abnormality that in this book will shock you the most. Coping with a guy like Bagge also not in this scenario is never simple.

I love this books also because the narration is precise, punctual, vivid,  dreaming, scaringly true.

The title of the book is referred at a Bagge's dream where he is judged by a tribunal of birds.

Not only: the book will also reveal the entire story of Baldr, killed thanks to the help of a beautiful Christmas's apparently, innocuous plant: the mistletoe. It's beautiful, I treated it in another review and I leave you the joy of a complete explanation of this myth, following Allis's words.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio Editori for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Il Piccolo Virgil by Ole Lund Kirkegaard

Il Piccolo Virgil by Ole Lund

Kirkegaard is a wonderful sunny and funny children's book published by Iperborea.

Ole Lund is one of the most beloved Danish writer of children literature.

Virgil lives in a hen house and as companion a rooster only with a leg. Virgil is happy to living there; he doesn't have other places where to go. He goes to school and he has two other friends: Oskar, an avid reader, and Carl Emil a pretty rich kid.

Adventures that these three buddies will live are the most diversified ones. In an adventure they will try to find a good spouse for a stork. They end up thinking that the goose of a strong, fat lady living close to them can be a great solution. In the night they steal the goose but immediately after in the morning the lady notices her goose close to the house of the owner of the local grocery store. The lady pretty upset promises to that man of not buying anymore anything in his store, thinking that the goose stolen by him.

An episode I found hilarious and fascinating the one of the birthday of Carl Emil. Invited by him, Virgil and Oskar will bring him two special gifts. Oskar presented him a toad, Virgil a box with an invisible gift. At the same time in this episode as you will read will happen this world and the other and for Carl Emil's parents the experience is more than stressing.

At the same time the celebration of birthday is lived by these two children as a great novelty, because in the case of Virgil I guess he didn't know when and where he was born; in the case of Oskar, maybe her mother didn't remember. A lot of time ago it happened. 

Another episode will involve a vagabond who must return in a special town called Giappia where people are constantly happy; they eat  rays of the sun, they are constantly happy and joy, joy, joy in Giappia is always warm!!! 

In every chapter you will discover imagination in motion, a lot of fun, and sometimes these children will become troublemakers listening what adults are saying or suggesting. Trying to better some situation they will create more chaos. Always appearing innocents.

I really enjoyed reading the adventures of Virgil and his friends. It's a great and funny reading that I am sure will be appreciated by everyone.

I thank Iperborea for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori  

Pearce Trenary remembers his dad

He was killed a year ago on Sept. 27th while walking  on the street in downtown Memphis after an event organized by his chamber. He was in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

Phil Trenary was synonime of Memphis. He donated to his adoptive city, a city that hugged him and loved him a lot, all the best he could give at. 

CEO at first of the Pinnacle Airlines, at the moment of his death was the CEO of the Great Chamber of Commerce. 

The main passion of Phil Trenary were airplanes; a passion that meant work as well and a passion transmitted also to his son Pearce who, in an interview at a TV station of Memphis remembered his dad and his profound connection with him. Phil Trenary has always been a father close to his children. Pearce remembers that he received two calls from him everyday;  he loved all his family tenderly and was close to all of them.

Another big love of Phil Trenary was his adoptive city, Memphis: the legacy left by his dad, Pearce says is strong in this sense. Phil Trenary had clear ideas about Memphis.

It was indispensible to "Make the city the best that can be" a legacy that the family Trenary want to perpetuate. Memphis won't remain without them now that Phil is disappeared in such a devastating way. But Pearce is also firm: "Memphis is my dad, aviation was my dad, not what happened." 

Pearce adds also that the place where he finds the most profound connection with his father is the airport: "We became buddies here."

Anna Maria Polidori 

KETO La Dieta per bruciare i grassi, resettare il metabolismo, potenziare il cervello, e ridurre il rischio di malattie by Dr. Josh Axe

KETO La Dieta per bruciare

i grassi, resettare il metabolismo, potenziare il cervello, e ridurre il rischio di malattie by Dr. Josh Axe, from Nashville, Tennessee, is a book by Marsilio Editori that wants to speak an old message to the newest generations: it's important to try to follow what the oldest generations ate for living a best life.

But, let's start from the beginning. What the Keto diet wants to do? 

First of all the promise is that abolishing carbohydrates, just 30 grams per day and introducing good fats, body will be forced to use the material "put aside" previously; the fat accumulated. In this way you will start to losing weight.

I tell that I love this diet so badly because it's fresh, plenty of beverages and water (I think more than 2 liters of water everyday) and I use some of the ingredients described by Axe.

Today for example for dinner I decided for a broth, one of the most important components of the Keo Diet. Keeping alive as long as possible our collagen is important and using broth prepared with parts of domestic animals, rich of collagen will help us to preserve it as well.

Sure the list of food you will need to avoid are many starting with every kind of sugar, cereals, bread, industrial products (thumb up), coke, milk and fresh cheese.

I see you all scared: possible? What should we eat? Organical food, the best one: the author expresses the desire that people shouldn't never look at industrial food for losing weight, because buying that food would mean to reduce the curative power of this diet. You won't just lose weight, you will build also another identity, with more freshness, with more freedom, more lightness.

Organic foods admitted are great: from lattuce to coconut milk; for preparing your dishes with flour, you will use the almond one, sugar will become stevia in your dictionary and your...cupboard. Veggies of every sorta will be deliciously present on your table. Powder proteins will become collagen proteins. Spaghetti-zucchini will become the answer to pasta. Beverages involves green tea, tea in general coffeeine, broth. 

You won't lose just fat with this diet, but you will avoid a lot of important illness.

Mr. Axe wrote this book also taking in consideration the great amount of obese Americans. The South of the US, with their robust and delicious food doesn't help at all.

A fat person is more lazy and can develops various problems with the time. Keeping under control weight is crucial.

To my point of view this one can become a life-style. Just I think that this diet is potentially expensive, and not everyone can buy always organically.

For the rest, this one is a wonderful book and an exciting diet for all that people in love for veggies and natural food; highly recommended to everyone.

I love so badly the second part dedicated to delicious recipes. Truly inspiring!

I thank Marsilio Editori fot the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Literature and the Rise of the Interview by Rebecca Roach

Interviews are an important part in a reporter's life, because thanks to them, we enter in the existence of people and if these ones are collaborative, interviews are a successfull tool for rhe understanding of  the past and the present not just of that person but of the society where he/she lived in and she/he is living in. 

Literature and the Rise

of the Interview by Rebecca Roach takes in consideration the birth of the interview seeing it from the perspective of literary culture; interviews are more or less 150 years old and if now they are a compulsory instrument of communication where people love to tell their projects, latest movies, albums, facts if they are public characters not just in magazines and newsmagazines or TV but mainly in social medias, in the past the interview was lived as an important social and cultural tool for reaching readers.

Literature has discovered interviews in a traumatic way. A suffering passage. It had to be just a private conversation the one between Lowell and Julian Hawthorne, pity that the second one decided to release an interview. Lowell was consistently upset for the publication of his thoughts; that interview with Lowell was released without, apparently, his approval. The writer thought that that one was a conversation. Discovered this story and although pretty critical regarding the role of interviews, Henry James understood that something anyway was mutating in culture. 

He also understood the power of women in the sector although women, as always, weren't at all taken in consideration in their writings. If males journalists were taken in consideration and their pieces were important and discussed politically and socially, women, again, were behind, and they didn't appear credibles. Just because women, of course. In the Bostonians and other works by Henry James we find the work done by ladies and the meaning of the cultural changes that started to taking place in the sector.

Vanity Fair at the beginning of 1920s started to publish a series of imaginary interviews: the so-called "Impossible Interviews."

Hollywood noticed with great interest the power that a good interview could potentially have for promoting movies, actors, their work, passing through their projects and their private existence.

Everyman published at some point, we are at the end of 1920s and the beginning of 1930s "How Writers Work" a series of interviews and articles involving pretty diversified writers; from Rilke to Ellis, from Hemingway to D. H. Lawrence.

The readers of Everyman were engaged in expressing their questions, in a fertile debate about for example Joyce and his works, but always seeing books and writers in practical vantage point.

Interviews with the most diversified authors were friendly; Everyman felt the necessaity of let show the mutation that the market and literary genres started to produce.

There were problems of course and one of the most remembered, changing magazine and city, was the one met by The Paris Review when some people of their staff interviewed Jack Kerouac. Berrigan and two writers interviewed Kerouac. Kerouac evidently didn't love that fellowship and tried all his best for let them know that and vice-versa. In that case the interview is not anymore impersonal, but starts to be a sort of fight with the person you are interviewing.

The book treats also our times and new medias and online magazines.

Very interesting and engaging, it was a pleasure to read it and I suggest it to everyone interested in journalism or books. There are great suggestions in that sense. I prepared a long list of books and magazines I want to read.

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

Il Piccolo Principe by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It's a tender book speaking to the heart of people Il Piccolo Principe

by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. A children's classics, but good for adults as well. At first there are "impressions." Someone let you see a drawing and they ask to you what it represents; answers are in most cases the most diversified ones: sometimes, also when they try to put the picture clear at your eyes they don't receive any kind of positive answer:  no one will guess what there is in front of them. Growing means also to lose the capability of dreaming, not remaining anymore connected with the most beautiful spheres of the universe that would grant us imaginations and the possibility of seeing different realities.

Saint-Exupery died mysteriously somewhere while he was flying; and the book is prophetic. Also in this case, the main protagonist, the aviator has an incident with his airplane ; he tries to fix the problem at the engine in the middle of the deser of Sahara, so without too much water, and a big heat, when he spots the Little Prince.

This one, being a Little Prince is curious and imperative at the same time and asks him of drawing him a beef. A beef in a box. The Little Prince explains to the man that he lives in a very distant Planet and that he is there for a visit. He visited also many other planets, finding a lot of weird Kings, some of them irrationals, like the king who wanted to keep the precise numbers of stars close to them: he accumulated that numbers, considering stars of his property, being a serious man. The Little Prince is fascinated. Fascinated by other worlds and sunsets. In this sense the passage of the book reminded me what my dad told me when I was little: that when it was dark in our area, there were other worlds where it was borning a new day. I thought all electrified that I would have wanted to afford in that places as quickly as possible. The Little Prince tries all his best for not losing any sunset; sunsets are seeing with melancholic touch by Seint-Exupery.

He has a friend, the Little Prince in his Planet: it's a little and affectionate flower, a rose,we will discover later, with just four thorns for protecting her. They made friendship and the Little Prince, overprotected her, because at first the rose wanted to be over-protected, with as many tools as possible for resisting at weather and so on. Then, when the rose understood that the Little Prince would have left the Planet for a trip thought that maybe it would have been better to set herself free, because in this way she would have been more independant and she would have fought alone her battles. 

The Little Prince will also meet many roses in our Planet but the profound connection established with his rose is an unique relationship made by trust, affection. He didn't know what affection meant, but he discovered the meaning of being affectionate to someone when he met in our Planet a Fox. This fox is a fox as any other ones in the world. She loves hens, she tries of running away from hunters. Her life sometimes is not so exciting, but she asks to the Little Prince of stopping by everyday, so that she will see the world where she is living in, a bit differently thanks to him; she will remember him when she will see a field of grain, of the same beautiful color of the hair of the Little Prince, or imagining a different world, not just the one she knows: hens, hunters, and escapism, physically ahem, in this case.

Wherever a man will live won't never be satisfied, learns the Little Prince and every man tries to search in travelling his own destiny, or reality, or path. 

The end is prophetic, because like also for Saint-Exupery, when the Little Prince will leave this world for his Planet, no sign of his passage will be found althought at first his "empty body" would have stayed there for some while because too heavy for being in grade of flying in all the corporeity;  but, surprisingly, it disappeared immediately after.

Antoine Saint-Exupery was surely a man plenty of fascination and mystery.  

Anna Maria Polidori 

Verses Versus Empire by Abdiel LeRoy

That the world is a complete chaos appears more than evident and that there is fluidity of thought, because honestly we don't know anymore who is representing us, more than correct. That we should think with our own head and not with the ones of our governments another healthy consideration, the hilarious, funny, sunny book by Abdiel LeRoy

Verses Versus Empire, this time focus its attention on the Trump's Presidency.

The beginning of this book is absolutely hilarious. Saint Peter, once that Trump is dead tries to have a decent chat with him; he can't, because obviously the President insists, focusing on the thematic too dear to him; the arrival of the archangel Gabriel, Protector of Medias, Journalists, and in general Communication can't be helpful and Trump is "delivered" to hell without too many compliments.

The book touches also the rest of Trump's Presidency: positions about climate change, children separated by their immigrant parents (and it will be difficult a reunion so soon),  the shy position regarding the #neveragain movement with, as solution, the idea of introducing guns in schools seeing teachers as in the wild west ready to kill a possible assassins as John Wayne would have done.

Strong words are dedicated to the American violent culture and the #metoo movement.

Beautiful, centered, fnny, hilarious. Highly recommended.

I thank LeRoy for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori