I will Never Forget You by TATSUYA MIYANISHI

I will Never Forget You  by TATSUYA MIYANISHI

is another great, moving,  engaging children's book published by Museyon Books. As always, the protagonist is the Tyrannosaurus 🦖 that we learnt to appreciate during his past adventures. 

It seems that his destiny is the one of meeting little creatures, in a sort of karma.

This time a little Spinosaurus, Wimpy; Wimpy went to the shore for picking up some red berries because her mother was sick. 

Unfortunately he met along his way the Tyrannosaurus and you know that: the chap is constantly starved. 

He started to appreciate the idea of eating Wimpy when, approaching him, a big and terrible quake "broke" the land and his desire and the two remained in a little tiny island, surrounded just by a berry tree. 

Thanks to the ability of Wimpy of finding fish, the Tyrannosaurus didn't kill him; the two, constricted, forced at staying so close became friends discovering something more of each other. 

Sure, the Tyrannosaurus didn't have a name, no one told him pleasant words. It sounded a surreal world the one created by the quake and the arrival of this new friend, so kind, so able to let him feel good. The Tyrannosaurus thought that after all he could express some humanity, that, simply he was human.

Slowly the Tyrannosaurus started to appreciate fruits, and lately he learnt the meaning of being generous with other animals.

For this reason, and this one is the moving part of the story, for helping the mother of Wimpy he will lose his existence. In doing it, he donated what he could,for saving Wimpy's mother.

Wimpy won't never forget this unusual, big, enourmous animal; he also saved his existence, healed his mother and his sacrifice meant new fruit trees born thanks to him.

I loved this fairy-tale and I found it moving, maybe because there is involved an ugly animal and you can't never think that a horrible animal like that one can be in grade of act of kindness and generosity. 

For this reason we can wish that always more often, speaking about human beings, there will be ugly people in grade to change their path for good, becoming decent people. 

This children's book opens a miriad of dialogues, suggestions, with your children.

Highly recommended.

Published by Museyon Books I thank the publishing house for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Swan Bay by Rod Jones

I personally met Roday Jones two decades ago when he was searching for some material regarding Mediterranean Women. He stayed in our area for 12 days and later Rod would have been published in the most read Australian newsmagazine The Age a piece about his visit. Many things changed from that visit: Irene died, she was the official guide of Rod, during that 12 days and they spent wagons of time together; Assunta and Ubaldo closed the bar, keeping opened only the tabaccheria for the affectionated fans of cigarettes, Chicco became a pizzaiolo, Nicola works in a  factory, Chicca is married, Don Marino died. Ambulants diminished in numbers: the bakery store of the town interrupted the service of bringing bread in rural areas; Mileno the fruit-veggie ambulant vendor, one of the most serious person I have ever met on the face of this Earth went in pension dying too soon.

The only vendor passing every week remains Federico, the son of Remo, dead now, with its  articles for the home. People in the area diminished pretty strongly.  

I was so surprised when I found this book by Rod Jones, Swan Bay

A Novel of Destiny, Desire, Death in the emporium of the ladies of Books for Dogs.

I found that this book after this period of lockdown and this "normality" was a beauty sign.

I brought home last saturday for the cheap price of one euro each, several books, eight in total, for helping the ladies and their charity.

It's a strong book this one written by Rod. I have read his first book Julia Paradise. I asked for that one because Rod catched me through a website of correspondence but we were at the beginning of the internet and I wanted to be assured that this man was seriously a writer.

I still hadn't read this one. His novels are populated by complicated ladies, strange relationships.

Swan Bay is the perfect place chosen by a lot of creatives in Australia; musicians, movie-makers, writers, reporters, when one day the arrival of a lady called Virgil in a house still "abandoned". Apparently she is alone, she spends her time always alone; she loves to sing piano, reading, smoking marijuana;  she has a couple of friends who spend with her some time once per weekand firstly she is sick.

The writer starts a friendship with her, and he will be violently introduced in her world: a world populated by illness, hospitals, seizures, failures, betrayel, death; she had a pregnancy but she lost the baby; her companion left her for another girl.

The book ends with the departure of Virgil.

The book is dense of considerations, in particular complications created by relationships,  that monogamy spasmodically searched by men but, simply, not existing. That's why there are betrayals, sufferances, new people in grade to re-generate a lost soul passing through the sufferance of the betrayed one.

Pretty short book, 162 pages, it seems more long because of the sufferance emanating through the book by  the various characters.

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flagg

One of the best news I could receive: Random House via NetGalley asked me if I wanted to reviewing the latest book by Fannie Flagg: The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop. This book will be published on October 27th in the USA. 

I absolutely returned with joy, enthusiasm at

Whistle Stop, the imaginery little town in Alabama created by Fannie. 

Her characters, Idgie Threadgood, Ruth Jamison, Sipsey, Big George, Buddy Threadgood, Ninny Threadgood, Evelyn Couch, are unforgettable.

In Fried green Tomatoes we breath the most profound essence of the South of the USA: religion, rebel spirit, violence perpetrated to a lady, a murder, racism, great food, friendship, love, departures, shocking events in grade to change the existence of people; it is a book plenty of humanity and real life in motion.

So, what is about The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop, you'll ask?

I imagined at first only the isolated story of Stump, Buddy Threadgood's Jr. the son of Ruth Jamison and her disgraceful husband Frank Bennett: there is much more.

The community of Whistle Stop, Alabama, with its hairdresser, the café and other activities was in fact, very united; when the town slowly slowly died, no one lost definitively connections with the rest of the community. 

Life continued in other parts of the States for all the protagonists, but persisted the curiosity because roots are something that no one can remove or delete. Plus, the adventures experienced in the little town of Whistle Stop by all these characters were too unforgettable and fascinating.

The town had had also a potential journalist, Dot, who kept connected the entire community with a newsletter when she lived in Whistle Stop and later when she abandoned the area for another State thanks to a frenetic exchange of  letters with the rest of the Whistle Stop community here and there, reporting the most relevant news and year spent by everyone with a long letter sent during the Christmas Time.

This book, more modern and "mundane" under many aspects, is a reflection of our times; the various protagonists of these new stories are pretty old, some of them gone; who is alive is coping with ageing; this book is also a dream; the possibility of new beginnings for everyone.

The story of Buddy Threadgood is relevant in this sense; with the time he became a vet, he married a lady and has had Ruthie. Ruthie, once grown up, and, beautiful as her grand-mother Ruth was, married a boy, Brooks absolutely in love with her, although persisted the skepticism of Brooks's mother, a pretty snob lady, desidering for her son someone else, much more rich, and more close to their social status.

Anyway, the marriage of Brooks and Ruthie was absolutely happy with the arrival of two children. Brooks had many dreams but unfortunately he won't realize most of them.

Buddy Threadgood Jr, old now, and with a sort of little dementia going on, before to fall too sick and not remembering anything, decides to run away from the Home where he is living in, searching for Whistle Stop and hoping to see another time his old native village.

Unfortunately his trip is deludent; the old places he knew so well, are, simply, unrecognizables.

Ruthie falls desperate when she understands that her dad escaped away, and at first she thinks that he can be dead. But he isn't; thanks to this disappearance Evelyn Couch read the message published in a newsmagazine regarding the disappearance of Buddy Jr. 

She immediately recognizes Buddy Threadgood Jr. 

Oh; Ninny had told her wagons of facts of Buddy. He lost his left arm at the age of 7; he was called Stump by Idgie. 

Evelyn was grateful to Ninny for what she did for her. 

Ninny was the best guidance she could have had; a help arrived directly from God. 

Evelyn, met Ninny in a home where stayed also her husband's mother, another disgusting lady; the one of Evelyn was a sad, absolutely depressing existence, with a man uninterested to let her show manifestations of any sort of affection. Thanks to Ninny, Evelyn, the unsecure creature who cried most of the time eating chocolate for forgetting the ugliest part of the world became a successful seller of Mary Kay Cosmetics and much much more, becoming a multi-millionaire lady. 

Evelyn calls so Ruthie, asking to see her. Evelyn has a box of pictures and other items presented her by Ninny; a big gift containing the memories of her existence; many pictures of Buddy, Idgie, Buddy's mother.

Evelyn would want to give this material to Buddy Jr.

Gratitude is so big in Evelyn, that she decides with Ruthie of restoring the old town of Whistle Stop! presenting to Buddy the old house where he lived in when little, modernized, restored, re-built.

 

As you will see there will be problems at first...

The book returns continuously in the remote past, and then in more recent years in a fluidity of space and time, in grade to motivate choices made by the various protagonists, reporting stories of people, anecdots of a little community who made the difference.

The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop is a pleasant return home; in a home, Whistle Stop, that crossed the destinies of many people forever connected thanks to solidariety, love, friendship, help, preserved memories, good tales, great recipes, solidity.

It's a beautiful portrait of the South of the USA, its generosity, amiability and hospitality, the ingredients for a great reading, with the positive, optimistic touch of Fannie Flagg that is one of the best distinctive part of her writing.

Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Random House for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori  

Quite Moments for Busy Days by Donna K. Maltese

Quite Moments for Busy Days by Donna K. Maltese

is a new book by Barbour Publishing.

Everyday we produce wagons of thoughts; someone tried to count them; and eeek the number is impressively big: 50.000!!

These thoughts elaborated everyday by women sometimes are incredibly pessimistics and negative. 

Seeing life in a  pessimistic view, is sometimes pretty simple considering also the times that we are living in, not just plenty of uncertainty, but also surrounded by invisible enemies, as a virus can be, racial problems and more.

We musn't think our existence negatively: but...How can we change this perspective? Who can help us? There is no doubt: the word of God and... Barbour! With this new guide, that you can bring everywhere! Thanks to this book you will surely receive the best help.

In this book, you will find the most beautiful and suggestive Bible Verses; you can meditate the Word; then, there is a little explanation and more uplifting words. They're for all necessities and occasions. For our creativity, for our success, for our personal goodness, for truth, strenght, love, Peace, Joy...

Absolutely for every woman! for staying positive and for bettering ourselves! with God's presence in our existence. 

Highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Barbour Pulishing for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Sulle Ali degli Amici Una Filosofia dell'Incontro by Pietro Del Soldà

Sulle Ali degli Amici

Una Filosofia dell'Incontro by Pietro Del Soldà is a wonderful book about friendship and the meaning of it.

Starting with considerations of our times, populated by a fragmentation of friendship because of social medias, and so a lot of contacts with which we interact in a daily base but that we can't call friends in the most profound meaning of it, we are re-directed thanks to the author in the old Greek world and the meaning of friendship for Socrates, who lived a lot of time before Christ. 

As maybe you will remember the philosopher was killed in Athen for various reasons. 

Socrates didn't avoid his end; he embraced death with joy and enthusiasm. 

While his disciples tried all their best for saving his existence, Socrates was upset, because although the profound friendship that he had with these young men, they didn't understand his point of view, the desire of dying in his city, and they were not grade to see that departure in this way; after all, for Socrates, the best thing to do. 

Leaving Athen would have meant in fact to him an outrageous gesture; Athens was his city and there, he would have lost his existence. Socrates asked to his friends to enter more deeply in connection with him, his soul, for accepting and maybe admiring his choice.

Why friendship is so important? 

Because it put in connection the most diversified souls. Yes: it is not important who we are, where we live, if we are rich or poor, tall of short, beauty or ugly, a friend won't see that treats, but the missing part of his/her character and so a sparkle of that part still lacking in his/her soul and this attraction means that the person is ready to discover a new soul and wants to create a relationship of friendship. 

That's why friendship and friends are so important for the existence of an individual.

Oh: real friendship of course can also live moments of interruptions, because each of the individuals involved in the relationship can know moments of standby, but wherever there will be a friend, this friend will remain devoted to the other soul that he/she is not hearing or seeing at the moment.

Socrates once met in a gymnasium some teengars and they started to ask him who a friend is and how to define the word of friendship. 

Socrates doesn't think that a friend should be so close to the personality of the other one (I agree!) because it's in the differentiations that we create a solid friendship, not in being similars. 

Of course similarities can be important and sharing the past, sharing common experiences, scholastic ones etc is absolutely important and remarkable but it doesn't mean at all that these experiences can help to build a solid friendship. Friendship is a territory completely different; an exploration of the other one.

Friends are priorities, joys, differentiations, sometimes they change our perspective of seeing the reality and vice versa. 

I hadn't never understood the theory of beauty told by Socrates. I admit that to me remained a mystery per decades and also when I went to my ex institute as a reporter for interviewing students at the end of their course, they always told me of the "Idea of Beauty transmitted by the school." Honestly to me it didn't say anything, but to them it was central.

For once, in this book, I received a beautiful explanation of this word.

Friend is synonime of beauty, tells Socrates. 

Classifying friendship or beauty is impossible because there are no parameters. 

The author compares beauty to light.

Beauty is in grade, being not reachable, to escape away, but at the same time it illuminates the world and our existence. 

When we see a beautiful painting, a landscape, a sunset particularly attractive, we say that it is beauty isn't it true?  

The beauty is a characteristic, of course untouchable and not physical, typical of the world and things that surround our daily existence; but wait: to Socrates beauty is lived differently, in a more physical way: it's indispensible to give humanity and shape to beauty, thanks to our connections, building beautiful relationships and friendships.

It could happen also when we impact tremendously with a city rich of culture. I remember that when I visited the last time Florence, I cried several times for the joy of being there and seeing and visiting all that beauty, immense treasure of culture, sculptures, paintings, and the immensity value given at the city by people from all over the world and the meaning that all of it meant: immortality. 

Generations after generations I read wagons of tales of known and unknown people in our beautiful Italy.

For the author, Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway mean the beauty and richness of Spain in the 1920s and the personal probems of the protagonist Jake Barnes in love with Brett Ashley.

Michel de Montaigne said once: "I don't know best school for the existence than presenting to people the diversifications of other many existences, opinions, customs..." It's indispensible to open the horizons, to look not just our little garden, but at the immensity, complexity of the world surrounding us.

This book at the moment has a crucial importance considering the ugliness of the world where we live in.

A black man was killed in the USA, and turmoils and manifestations for a different world, for a world of peace, for a world without any other discrimination, started to take place in the entire country. It also meant destructions, it also meant disorders. It's...ugly. Violence is ugly.

Beauty in this sense is seeing like the possibility of building a new world, a peaceful world, a world where dialogue will be the priority, and where serenity, joy, and cooperation for a better life of the various individuals, a priority. 

Beautiful things are re-connected with our friends. It's a return, writes the author, like it was for Ulysses his return to Itaca once completed his trip. 

Friendship means setting us free from the logic of opportunism tells Aristotle; and acting in this way, continues Aristotle means also to be best citizens.

Aristotle interconnected policy with friendship. To him acting pressed by a friend in the society means bettering the world in a beautiful modality where opportunism doesn't exist.

Utility: Aristotle thinks that who act well doesn't think opportunistically and this one is the first step for building happy people and a happy society.

Aristotle divided the various friendships: the useful one, the edonistic one, but friendship is never divided by the polis, and it is its cement. For polis, old greek imagined the social tissue of the city.

Michel de Montaigne, in 1550s met Etienne de La Boétie, and they became pretty great friends. In common they shared their love for classic studies.

Montaigne would have written later that to his point of view, there is not a sentiment more profound than the one of friendship and that there is no comparison with other feelings. Plus, he added that relatives can't never be lived as friends. So the relationship between a mother and a child, a father and a child or also the love-story of a couple can't be absolutely  compared to the beauty, intense relationship of a friendship.

Friends are free and they act freely. 

Then, said once Socrates, there are special people: people with the sparkle of freedom and immensity once tasted when they danced in the sky with some Gods. These souls are special ones because their corporeity won't never permit them in this phase of flying away but they can do that in many different ways. They are special individuals still in grade to see the immensity discovered before.

A book this one important for our times, so tribulated. It permit to read our reality pretty well. It is clear and explicative.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Aspetti del Nuovo Radicalismo di Destra di Theodor W. Adorno

It's up to us. The destiny of a world free from any radicalism of right it's in our hands. We can't be just spectators but people with more responsibility regarding the present and the future of the world.

This one is the last conclusion of Theodor W. Adorno in the pamphlet  Aspetti del Nuovo

Radicalismo di Destra. This clear little book published by Marsilio takes in consideration a conference Adorno had had at the University of Wien on April 6th 1967. 

At the beginning Adorno traces an ideal line of connection between the radicalism of right and people connected to it: in general peasants, frustrated with the establishment because they don't receive proper answers; poor people and all that ones thinking that the capitalism can't be the best answer to their problems and expectations. 

Adorno in fact thinks that the problem they were currently living, after all, was similar to the ones that anticipated the third Reich: turmoil a social condition of most people unsatisfied. 

These groups, insists Adorno hate with all themselves communism and every sort of idea connected with it. These ideologies in general are stronger when there is a general weakness in the system of a state: they want to represent the answer to the problems of people.

Unity, the idea of coesion is part of the ideology of nationalisms; it is true, adds Adorno, that these groups don't tend to develop a specifical ideology. They just hate everyone, they don't love communism at all, they are anti-semitic, and they use mainly  propaganda for spreading their ideas. 

They're not elegant in their way of acting; and there is falsity in their actions because says Adorno, they are in grade of hiding their real purposes letting believe someone completely different to the people and masses.

The nationalistic policy is a policy of catastroph and insanity and technological perfection. As said before intellectuals were and are lived pretty critically by the nationalism of right because seen as the priviledged ones, in contrapposition with "real workers."

Anti-semitism remain one of their main flag spreading the idea that if all that people were killed during the last world war conflict, maybe they committed something. At the same time another big flag of this ideology is the anti-americanism. (We were in the Cold War and there were two blocks.) 

The propaganda used by the nationalism is necessary to the group because it helps at spreading tensions in the masses, passing through a so-called strong man.

These times under many ways are, more than in the recent decades, populated by new nationalisms and populistic movements with the so-called strong men, "born" thanks to the international global crisis that there is in the world.

The new pandemic flu, racism (as we are seeing these days in USA after that a black man has been killed by a police man) and resentments are dangerous spies of weakness of the systems; and there, in these weaknesses a culture like the one of nationalism of right can grow up. So as Adorno told at the end of the conference: it's all up to us and let me add, good sense and intelligence to keep our countries free from these dangerous ideologies.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

The Good for Nothing Frogs by Daniel Georges

I have always loved frogs. 

They meant to me hearing them during the night when more little and then, when the day started, leaving the place to birds, roosters and other creatures. 

Unfortunately the new window glasses are too heavy for hearing them anymore as in the past, but thanks to the internet I can hear their concert every night and it is so peaceful and natural.

I so appreciated with joy this children's book The Good for Nothing Frogs by Daniel Georges. 

As we will see later, there is also a strong morale in this story. 

We are in a big castle where lives a king. 

A king so jealous of his sleeping time that no one must try to disturb him. His chef is a crocodile. Substantially he is a sort of factotum, not just a chef. One night the king can't sleep because of frogs's chant and the crocodile suggests of capturing them and later, why not? cooking them. 

Just...Nature is nature and every creature that it is missing mean an alteration of the eco-system. What happened once all frogs were captured? Fleas, mosquitos became the happiest creatures in the land, constricting, forcing the king at taking another measure: he released the frogs, punishing the chef. 

The crocodile insisted in fact with the king, that that ones were creatures good for nothing: they arrived at the decision of capturing them for this reason.

Just.. as explain the author, no one should say at a person or a creature a nasty phrase like that one, simply because everyone play a perfect role in the society or in nature and he/she is useful in a way or in another.

Beautifully illustrated, you can't lose it!

It's a powerful children's book that will bring optimism also at that kid who think that he hasn't still found his/her place on this Earth, because he met nasty companions at kidergarten or school.

Highly recommended.

I thank the author for the copy of the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori