Cahier de L'Herne Giono

Oh, Jean Giono! What a fairy-tale is this new Cahier

hi

de L'Herne dedicated to this beloved author!

Giono has represented per generations the writer of the  rural life: born in Provence, Giono supported spasmodically an existence distant from the city, and strongly connected with the most beautiful nature's values: we speak of trees, grass, farm animals, good wine and food from the natural products of farms and fruits trees.

It became a philosophy of life the one of Giono embraced in particular after the second world war by socialists, communists, jewish, minorities and people in search of tranquillity and peace.

Giono is not just this: he loved paintings and music, he appreciated poetry, he thought that friendship, largely treated in his books, was the best value of this world. 

He adored several writers: Melville, Virgil, Homer, Machiavelli (he truly appreciated the florentian writer) and Hemingway for his writing-style; he was an avid diarist as you'll learn, someone researched and pantheistic in his description of nature, people, men and women. 

He adored his wife and his children.

In the cahier you'll find letters to his family and friends. Friends and correspondents most of the time never met in real life as it happened with Henry Miller or Saint-Paul Roux: some not yet known writings, witnesses of his daughter with beautiful and touching anedocts and memories; poetry he adored; movies produced thanks to his books; pacifist, his most symblic book is represented by Que Ma Joie Demeure

. 

A wonderful cahier of a stunning writer.

Personally I consider this cahier a real treasure. I adore Giono and his messages to the humanity. Sometimes I ask to myself what he would think of the disappearance of many forests and trees in the world, so beloved in his books and which solutions he would proposes. 

A wonderful Christmas Gift this one!

I thank L'Editions de L'Herne for the physical copy of the cahier.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

Il Piccolo Libro di Bridgerton by Charlotte Browne

 Il Piccolo Libro di Bridgerton

by Charlotte Browne published by Sonzogno is wonderful if you love that magical time that was the Regency period and Bridgerton the tv series (I confess, never seen.) In this nice, kind and funny book you'll discover the story of the Regency from 1811 to 1820. It was a convulsive historical moment in which Napoleon was, at first, the strongest Emperor of Europe, where Mozart introduced to everyone Così fan Tutte; when, again, Napoleon lost his power: Lord Byron died and there were strong polemics regarding  the place where he had to rest in peace, considering the immorality of the man.

After many other historical facts, you'll discover also how to talk in regency-style thanks to the expressions used for describing men, women and situations.

You'll learn the best characteristics for becoming attracting in that society, with a lot of gossip; you'll dance wearing the perfect outfit and combing the hair according to the Regency-style: the importance of objects for a lady and their meaning will be a revelation.

Oh, a wonderful little book that will transport you in another era!

Perfect as Christmas-Gift, if you have romantic friends in love for past.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

A Revolution in Three Acts The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay &Julian Eltinge by David Hajdu & John Carey Foreword by Michele Wallace

A Revolution in Three Acts The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay &Julian Eltinge by David Hajdu & John Carey

Foreword by Michele Wallace is a new brilliant book by Columbia University Press. No, better: an incredibly delicious graphic novel exploring what it meant a tranformation of customs and performing in the USA at the beginning of the XXth century, where most people emigrated in cities with the desire, also, of assisting at new, exciting and elaborated shows.

Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay and Julian Eltinge were the first ones of a generation of performers: the advent of variety or the so-called Vaudeville, en francais was their art.

They were three different kind of persons: Bert Williams was black, so he experienced, as you will largely see a lot of racists problems; Julian Eltinge loved to perform wearing female clothes. He was gay and had a companion although he tried to keep silent his being homosexual with pictures and articles with always new girls, affirming he had had more than nine relationships.

Eva Tanguay was a provocative girl, with a great career.

Bert Williams became a great name and after the first years on stage he launched himself in several great productions. Discriminations didn't just touch him but also Jewish and italians.

Variety was pretty diversified and was for all tastes, after all. There was in fact a number of acrobats in it, you could find a comedian performing a monologue, there was space for classical music; whatever you wanted to see there was in a variety.

Bert Williams experienced a lot of problematics also inside his category; when there was a big strike for bettering the condition of workers at theather, Williams was not invited. Later someone called him but he didn't find a great atmosphere when arrived preferring to return home, discomforted. He died pretty soon. He was still in his 40s.

Eltinge at some point created a magazine dedicated to women; once appeared in all newsmagazines and magazines with this news: he would have married Eva: the story ended before the celebration of the marriage. 

Eltinge of all these three, was the latest one who participated at a silent movie. After some perplexities, launched himself in that career, different from the one of the variety, without any kind of success, but buying in the while a big house when in California, with mega-galactic ideas. He dilapited all his money. Some people, he died close to the stage, thinks that maybe killed himself. 

Eva lived till at 69 years dying in California, alone. 

Variety has been a real gym for these artists and many other ones.  

Let's remember Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (later Stanlio and Ollio) who at first started in the Vaudeville like Charlie Chaplin did.

Intense, well done! Captivating. Sad, happy, this book is a mixture of sentiments. I found it funny sometimes. Eva was funny, for sure! I really enjoyed reading it and I highly recommend it. Not only: being Christmas close, this one can be and it will be, a wonderful, wonderful gift for your friends in love for Broadway and acting!

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

In Pace con la Pancia by Silvio Danese

 In Pace con la Pancia

is another interesting book by Silvio Danese. I read and reviewed also his previous book La Pancia Lo Sa, published also in that case, by Marsilio. 

Danese is a doctor specialized in that field at the hospital of San Raffaele, Milan and so if you have any kind of disturb involving your intestine, your digestion, if you are affected by a nasty colitis, the most common inflammation of the colon, or the Chron syndrome, if you suffer of allergies or intollerances (we will discover the difference between these two disturbs) this book will reveal you everything, permitting an approach that it is reassuring and at the same time clear. It is important.

Danese decided to write this book after the lockdown and the advent, first of all of the Covid Pandemic.

Alimentary disorders, more stress, more sedentarietà, more time spent at home, less hours of sleeping because constantly worried, means to the second brain of our body an immense stress, because of an alteration also of the metabolism of the body. If, in fact, our brain is our rational organ, the intestine is the brain of our emotions, so everything, from joy, happiness passing through sadness, stress, fears means a message for that organ.

That's also why, suggests Danese, is important to keep cleaned our intestine, helping it when necessary with probiotics. 

An intestine kept cleaned and functional means happiness for the person and health for sure!

Written pretty friendly, with an approach you'll surely love, I highly suggest this book to all of you!

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy.

Anna Maria Polidori

Il Prete dei Fucili si Confessa by Antonio Mandrelli

Priest Antonio Mandrelli, 85 years, was born in Umbria. He serves the countryside churches of a little town called Pietralunga.

This priest became litterally famous after that, two years ago some burglars entered in his prestbytery stoling several objects including a pistol.

The priest, reached by press, confessed that in case of new aggression would have used his guns for protecting himself, reclaiming the possibility of legitimate defense.

It was a crucial moment in Italy: in the Parliament there was the discussion of this law. Don Antonio Mandrelli, a priest! saying these words, became incredibly popular and everyone wanted to see him on TV shows or magazines and newsmagazine. He became a real character.

Last may Antonio Mandrelli published a little book of memories, "Il Prete dei Fucili si Confessa"

and few days ago presented me a copy. While he was autographing it, Antonio told me: "I will be interviewd by Barbara D'Urso. Do you know her?" I told him I can see that she is a beautiful woman.

You'll read this book pretty quickly; 38 pages, plenty of illustrations of his existence, the one of Antonio the so-called "Priest of the Guns." 

Love, agriculture, friends, church priesthood, celibacy, Antonio spaces a lot sometimes with revolutionary ideas and strong, always strong, ideas.

You can feel, reading this little book the fragilities of this man of church, his anxieties, because don Antonio, at the end will embrace God and the church, becoming priest, but remaining alone, without a companion and several children and a feminine presence has been, absolutely his biggest regret.

Antonio reclaims his human weaknesses, his being first of all a man and then a priest: in the book he will let us know which had been  his flirts, loves, imaginary girlfriends, all of them sacrificed because of the church. Don Antonio has alweays been unsecure regarding what he wanted to be in his life: he decided to study for another degree because he wanted to teach as well. This one was his plan B. If his body would have been too weak for resisting the temptations, he would have left the church having a good job. 

A simple and complicated man at the same time, Antonio Mandrelli tells anedocts of the countrysides populated by a lot of families with communists ideas. It was the normality in the past, and Antonio, anyway, has never experienced problems with anyone.

He has strong ideas on the church. Brief prayers, concreets, he disagrees with the final part of the Holy Father, changed recently; he opens to women and men interested in entering in the church as priests. At the moment, remarks the priest, it's quiet impossible for a married man to become a diacon, or, at least, very difficult.

He feels a lot of melancholy for his parents with which he shared twenty-four years of his existence: an existence less wild, less vagabond. 

Past and future of the agriculture: being a truffles seeker, Antonio thinks that it is not possible to continue in this way and that the real seekers of truffles should respect, thanks to new modalities, fields and forests preserving and helping financially the owners of that fields and forests.

This book is available at FOTOLITO 90, Città di Castello.

E-mail info@fotolito90.com.

Price:12 euro.

Anna Maria Polidori 

World as Family A Journey of Multi-Rooted Belongings by Vishakha N. Desai

 World as Family

A Journey of Multi-Rooted Belongings by Vishakha N. Desai is one of the best memoirs I read this year. Simply clear, sincere, I firstly met online mrs Desai as moderator during a symposium organized by Columbia University Press on Covid-19 and vaccines: now we both follow each other on Instagram.

Born in Ahmedabad, India, in a family with seven other siblings, parents involved in the profound changes started by Gandhi, with which the father of Desai, journalist, worked with, Vishakha discovered an intellectual and fertile environment. She studied with success in exclusive schools and at the age of 17 her father encouraged her: spending a year in the USA would have been exciting. Vishakha hadn't never left her family, her loved siblings, the connections she had established, the new boyfriend she had, her dancing classes. How could she live well in a different distant country, with a foreign language, different customs, the idea of speaking 24 hours per day just American/English, eating different food, and living a different existence?

It hasn't been a simple choice, but Vishakha, also thanks to another friend interested in the program by the AFS, sent the application. Vishakha was accepted like also her friend and both of them left India for good: that one was their first intercontinental trip. They could not sleep for the excitement, and once arrived in New York City they admired the magnificent skyline. Vishakha was later directed to Santa Barbara where an adorable new family, the Reeds one, would have followed her during the year. New food, at first it was a weird world, a weird school, with weird students with their weird questions on drugs, but as also adds Vishakha, this experience, a complete full-immersion in another culture gradually changed her perspective of the world because these experiences open new horizons and let us think differently. 

She noticed this, when her father stopped by there, invited by the AFS: Vishakha saw him as a provincial man if compared with the people she met in a daily base in Santa Barbara. 

Simply: Vishakha was discovering other realities, more complicated and more different from her own existence in India, more simple and protected.

Once returned home the adaptation was not simple because Vishakha in the USA discovered individualism and privacy: the one she could not have in her own house. Also her accent at first appeared weird: and plus...Smells, perfumes of her own land appeared much more accentuated, and strange: was she noticing this because of her trip to the USA?

Vishakha changed, stopping to consider herself just a citizen of India but of a more big world, that included the USA.

In the while she fell in love for an American soldier, Tom, although their relationship, with a marriage celebrated in India, didn't continue once in the USA.

The end of it was reason of sadness, but Vishakha, who had also decided for an abortion in the while, because she was building her own career, became a name in the field of Indian art. She started to collaborate with prestigious realities and museums, ending in the MFA, Museum of Fine Arts of Boston where she worked with success for several years, before to start another adventure in New York City.

She found in Robert the companion of her existence, while she assisted at the degradation of health of her beloved parents, in particular her father, with a diagnosys of Parkinson.

When she married Robert, her father could not attend the wedding; after a while he suffered of a massive stroke. Vishakha tells that most of her family, now in the USA was hyper-busy and could not stay at long in India: at the same time, after three weeks of choma her father died.

Oh; Vishakha remembers the joy when she started to work at the MFA of Boston, receiving the visit of her parents; in particular her father was intrigued by the city where Gandhi studied in and he loved to search for all the places where he had been, and what influenced him giving coverage to this visit in a regular basis in the magazine where he was writing for; the popularity of Gandhi needed to be remarked in fact. 

I loved a lot the description of Vishaka's parents's second house in India with ten rooms plenty of books and statues of different divinities, a big garden and the fertile intellectual activity breathed everywhere.

But...What is World as Family? And when can we consider the world as a family? I personally consider the world as a family where I am accepted and loved and appreciated; it can be in my close or distant world/connections. 

Vishakha found that the integration or her being Indian didn't change the fact that she was an American citizen:that her world as family can be in India, but also in other parts of the world. 

An important chapter is dedicated to the current COVID-19 pandemics with reflections on economy, social injustices and discriminations in the world.

Highly recommended.

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

La France Goy by Christophe Donner

 La France Goy

by Christophe Donner traces the story of antisemitism in France at the end of the XIX century, and then the entrance in scene of Henri Gosset, the father of Jean Gosset dead in a concentration camp during the last second world war conflict.

I adore Jewish people, I love to be surrounded by them where possible and if possible, so to me reading some passages of this book have been pretty painful but here we are and let's try to define through the pages of this book written very well by Christophe what it meant anti-semitism in France.

OK: that word was born as you'll learn reading the book, that years, defined by a thinker. And now, imagine Alphonse Daudet.

Close to people he loved to be surrounded by like Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, there was also the frequentation with this certain Drumont that will become the central character of this book. 

Drumont was still a little journalist when met the first time Daudet: he didn't make a lot of his existence yet, but for many reasons Alphonse Daudet liked him immediately. Drumont became also close friend with Leon, Daudet's son. He had an extreme simplicity in the interaction with the little son of Daudet, influencing him heavily.

Drumont was not appreciated by all the friends of Daudet for his fixation regarding Jewish people. He hated them and he dreamed to see a jewishless world. When Zolà read some of his writings he had an animated conversation with Daudet: he understood that maybe he could not appreciate some jewish because of their behaviors, and we find good and bad people everywhere and a classification is a big error: totalizing, added Zolà, come on! was too much. 

Daudet asked to Drumont, where possible, of continuing to write something on Jewish people and Drumont accomplished the desire of Daudet creating a book long something like 1200 pages, and called La France Juive. 

Once finished, Daudet suggested to Drumont Les Editions Flammarion for the publication. At the Flammarion they appeared pretty...embarassed, when they received the manuscript. And not because they didn't want to publish the book for the thematic treated: no, no, in France there was freedom of expression but...It was too long, too heavy. Who could buy a book like that one? They risked to lose money in a bad investment. It wasn't the case. 

Daudet decided to speak with the guys at Flammarion, paying for the publication. The book was released in two tomes. At first it didn't sell any copy and no one, no one, reviewed it.

So, one day, Daudet had a conversation with the editor of Le Figaro. "Why is that?" he asked him.

"It's an embarassing situation..." started the editor of Le Figaro.

Daudet was categoric.

"Someone must write a review: also a very negative one, but I want to see a review in Le Figaro."

The editor looked at him perplexed, but with the idea of accomplishing that influential writer.

The review appeared, negative, (as I always say, they pay much more than when we write a positive review because there is more curiosity in the reader and be sure that in that case they will buy the book!), and the book became incredibly successful: a comparison that we can make? La France Juive became a sort of Bible: no one read it, but everyone had a copy in their houses.

Drumont didn't suffer anymore of economical problems and became a politician as well. His main crusade of course was his hate for Jewish people.

The hate spread by Drumont in his 1200 pages was big and when you plant that seed, you introduce in the society a dangerous and poisoned plant. His hate meant a personal fight against many jewish people: the story of Panama and the affaire Dreyfus is just an example. 

If Alphonse was becoming old, a new generation of antisemitists was becoming important: Leon Daudet, the son of Alphonse is a case. When his father died, with him died also that social peace still existing in France. That years in fact we assisted at several, turbulent events. 

Henri Gosset once in Paris entered in strict contact with Leon Daudet and his antisemitism. Henri was the father of Jean, later deported in a concentration camp during the last world war where he died. Jean was a philosopher, an anarchist. Jean was born thanks to the immense love felt by Henri for an anarchist called Marcelle. Thanks to this union, the arrival of Jean.

You will see terrorist attacks, fake news, false incidents, duels, departures, lies, suicides... 

Enjoy the reading. The book leaves more than an important message to all of us and the importance of building a good society, vehicoling healthy and positive messages of inclusion, friendship.

Highly recommended.

I thank Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna MariaPolidori