Freya: The Confession An Amish Story by Ashley Emma

Freya: The Confession

An Amish Story by Ashley Emma is a short story about a terrible incident committed by Freya. An entire family thanks to her horrible, unwanted action paid a terrible tribute in terms of sadness and interior devastation per years.

The family of this Amish community anyway, are people in grade of seeing facts under a different perspective, analyzing not just the sad event, but also the co-causes that brought to the fact. 

Freya did not know this and when she stopped by to the house of the Lapps, she lived a sort of shock: confessing her crime to these people, so nice, so gentle, was terrible. But Freya did it, and what she received was a blessing, and also an invite to join the Amish community for discovering their world.

Freya noticed that one of their sons decided to leaving. Why this same behavior couldn't be taken in consideration? Why a son once left the the Amish community can't return and family members can't stay in touch with him?

Beautiful thematics this one of a fascinating community for sure.

I thank the author for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Congo Blues by Jonathan Robijn

Congo Blues by

Jonathan Robijn will let you think a lot. Morgan lives in Bruxells but he was born in Congo. He doesn't remember anything of his past existence, because when arrived in Europe was extremely little. He is a pianist and the moment he is living not the happiest one of his existence. He lost in fact, his fiancee, dead for a horrible illness just a couple of years before.

Unforgettable, for case, apparently, Morgan enter in connection with a certain Simona, a beautiful black girl and someone else called Walter. 

These people will let him work, Morgan is specialized in jazz, in various locals and will remain in his existence for various weeks, before to leaving forever. 

At first, Morgan sounded like relieved. He didn't have anymore close to him a person so weird as Simona was. If, at first he offered her hospitality for one day, then, he noticed days became weeks.

But...He missed Simona and she didn't know where also Walter disappeared. He had a contact, left by Simona with a certain Lilly. Lilly in her eccentricities clarified some aspects of the existence of these people but what Morgan will discover later will be shocking.

This story treat the origin of a person, but also the thematic of parents in confrontation with adoptive children; what they search from an adoptive child in particular. Personally in this story we can see that Morgan hasn't never been too much passionate of his adoptive parents although, in particular her mother, transmitted him the love for art, music, books. He has always had the perception of been treated as a propriety. But, what the book underline is also an important question: is it important to discover the origins for a person? And we speak of a family, of a contest where a baby was born; is it good to try to search who we are passing through the knowledge of our parents, siblings? Can the contest and the origins change a lot who we are? 

Highly recommended book.

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

Pretty Little Potholders

Days ago I was reading on an American magazine, Angels on Earth, the story of a mother and a daughter, Patricia and Kristine. Kristine left Philadelphia for San Francisco, so her chats with her mother via Skype were long and plenty of facts to report, once per week. One day Kristine suggested to her mother a craft-activity while they were speaking: why not the creation of pot holders? 

I thought that somewhere I had a book published by Lark Books called Pretty Little Potholders.

This article gave me the inspiration for this review.

This book was sent me as a gift by Jennifer, an American contact working for a publishing house many years ago and it is beautiful. 

In the first part, all the tools and materials indispensible for the creation of a pot holder. They are nice and you can do them for yourself or selling them later for one-two-three euros.

Then many many creations that you can repeat or differentiate, depending colors you love,  destination of your pot holder. If it's just one for you or if you will start to create them for being sold to friends, collagues, or for being presented.

Colored, amicable, all these examples are wonderful! and you won't need anymore the exigency of buying them in a shop!

Anna Maria Polidori 

When they were Girls by Rebecca Deming Moore and illustrated by Mable Betsy Hill and Edited by Helen Mildred Owen

When they were Girls

is a fascinating book written by Rebecca Deming Moore and illustrated by Mable Betsy Hill and Edited by Helen Mildred Owen. I downloaded it on the Project Gutenberg and I consider this one a wonderful reading for adults and children as well.

In this book portrayed the most iconic girls who, growing up made the difference in their existence, but in particular in the one of people who met along their way, helping the Humanity to be a better place where live in.

Clara Barton, a fearless kid, became the founder of the Red Cross, Louisa May Alcott would have become the famous writer we all know. Her Little Women a classic I guess each of us has read and re-read.

A story I loved a lot a the one of Jane Addams. Born rich, when she noticed that poor people lived in a place of the city too crowded because they could not afford a beauty and isolated house, she promised to herself of living there, once adult, in a big house in a neighborhood like that one and to fight for poor people. 

A maintained promise. Once adult Jane did all her best, for bettering the human and social conditions of a lot of people of the working-class. 

She created a center where there was a Nursery; a place where, parents could leave their children,  creating at the same time wagons of courses for giving some new skills, chances and possibilities to people in need of a new work: from sewing to cooking,passing though  printing, photography, so that no one was left alone and they could find a good work.

Another strong girl was Evangeline Booth. She became with the time the Commander-in-Chief of the Salvation Army in the USA.

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an excellent pianist, performer and musician.

Frances Hodgson Burnett became an establised, beloved writer, but before, she was a kid tremendously attracted by books. Avid reader, there weren't too many children's books around her and her parents thought that presenting books for Christmas and birthday was sufficient. So, when she went to school, she made friendship with a lot of schoolmates, asking continuously to them new books. Later she discovered at home Shakespeare, Dickens. The rest is history!

Maria Mitchell was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Original and so numerous family the one of mr.Mitchell, populated by wagons of books, and the Bible, read everyday. Mr.Mitchell was a Quaker, in fact. The house, was plenty of magical tools and instruments. The one fascinated the most little Maria was a telescope for watching the stars and Planet, property of his dad.

Seeing that the daughter was so interested in the discovery of stars, planets and the Universe, mr.Mitchell taught her a lot. You can't believe it, but the same university of Harvard did not yet have a telescope more good than the one of mr.Mitchell!

One day Maria noticed a new comet and informed Harvard immediately. It was the beginning of his career in the astronomical field.

Helen Keller was a young baby from Alabama. She was born normal but later, still a kid, she became deaf and blind because of a severe illness. Helen found a way for re-starting to enjoy the existence and she passed at the history as an example of a person who promoted all the possible actions for helping people with deaf and blind, writing many articles, publishing several books and acting using her own example: the one of a successful woman.

More than twenty, beautiful profiles of extraordinary little girls, who became wonderful women.

Absolutely adorable, this book was firstly published in the USA in 1923.

Simply enchanting!

Anna Maria Polidori 

Just Enough Sufficiency as a Demand of Justice by Liam Shields

Just Enough Sufficiency

as a Demand of Justice  by Liam Shields is a new book by Edinburgh University Press. When I picked up this book I was attracted by the topic.

There is sufficient injustice in the world, work, lack of freedom and frustration. The author of this book, analyzes the reasons for a sufficientarianism in a future society more fair with everyone. 

The author start with an assumption that we see in a daily base: our society is made of excesses of various sorta. Lack of food and water in the world, lack of ecucation and so on. 

Societies should be just. If beliefs are not true, we should change them add Shields.

In policy every strategy and every choice is important: the kind of education we want to reserve to our children, medical treatments and so on. 

Shields think that principles of distributive justice would improve things in a  society more healthy; then a digression on the meaning of equality, what it is and how we can see it in motion.

An example for bettering productivity? Simply, paying well people. If people are stimulated by a good pay they will work harder and all the entire circle of productivity will benefit of it. Of course if people are under-paid, not stimulated to do better, because no one mind, they will lose interest, they won't give their best, and all the circle of productivity will be affected by their lack of creativity at work. 

Then the author explain what it the sufficientarianism and what it can means in a society this principle, explaining to the readers that there are two ways of thinking this philosophical concept. 

The explanation of sufficient autonomy as a way of life an interesting chapter for sure The other ones are Sufficiency and Education, A good Enough Upbringing and Sufficiency and Global Justice.

Interesting and highly recommended.

I thank Edinburgh University Press for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Re-Forming World Literature Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist Short Story edited by Gerri Kimber and Janet Wilson

Re-Forming World Literature Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist Short Story edited by Gerri Kimber

and Janet Wilson is an ambitious book created and thought for re-define the correct space of Katherine Mansfield and her short stories in the modernism putting the author in comparison to the other writers of her own period, for seeing her own differencies, distances and similarities.

Considered a minor modernist, surely Katherine Mansfield added components in her short stories, pretty different from the rest of her contemporaries. That humanity that went lost with the time. 

The new short stories, the new novels produced by Modernists didn't have at all the compassion and feelings expressed in the past centuries. 

Wars, pandemic flu, a world in turmoil had kept these creatives away from certain sentimentalism. Katherine Mansfield in this sense was an exception: completely different from most of these writers she used her words for giving voice to servants, a new character taken in consideration just as an extention of the story, or snobbed by most of the other writers or treated with great distance. 

Waugh was clear: she said that she wasn't interested to write about poor people because, simply, she didn't mind, she didn't know them. 

Servants in Manfield's tales are people she treats with respect and without any kind of humor or irony in this sense, understanding the asperity of their existence. 

We can meet her tenderness, another treat absolutely absent in her contemporaries in her more famous short story, Bliss. Mansfield in short stories analyzed also mixed marriages and what it meant to ama couple: the asperity that these differences could bring thanks to a differenct culture or religion.

Oxford decided when they compiled an important anthology of british literature of keeping out from it Katherine Mansfield, although write the author of the essay, there are many visible signs of her "passage" in UK.

Another analysys involve the USA, but also children's stories that Mansfield created, thanks to her vivid imagination and a childhood spent reading and re-reading the fairy-tales of Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen but also other authors who would have heavily influenced her once adult. Mansfield added in fact an animistic touch in the stories that later she would have created.

It's a work this one that can be read per chapters, the most significant ones for you, or all together. 

It depends by the reasons you have decided to buy this book.

It could be for study, (you would surprise your teachetrs! implementing a lot what written in your school text!) or just because you love Katherine Mansfield and you want to discover more, thanks to the apport of scholars. 

I picked up the thematic I found more important, the ones that personally fascinated my person, the ones I wanted to explore more, finding also other good readings along the way.

Highly recommended.

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

Anna Maria Polidori 

When Novels Were Books by Jordan Alexander Stein

When Novels Were Books

by Jordan Alexander Stein, is a new book published by Harvard Press.

This literary scholar explains in the book how the XVIII Century Novels were manifactured, read, bought. Novels, born as printed sheets ordered into a codex bound along one edge between boards or paper wrappers, later they would have been codified in other shapes. 

The originality of this essay, pretty erudite, is this one: the revelation that novels were strickly cemented with Protestant religion.

With the time, christianity and Protestants made the difference. The importance of  what to print was a priority and these novels, slowly became companions close to almanacs and protestant religious books, printed by the same printers.

Novel reading, with the time, became a central appointment for the middle-class citizens, females and not only... People could identitify themselves with the characters in the novel; these stories were in grade to touch the heart of readers. Samuel Pepys called the genre "diversion." After some while, novels could be largely found in many libraries, close to essays becoming evergreen classics.

The story of most classics and their advent in the society, including moral, religious impact, an example could be Crusoe (but there are many more) will be largely explained in this book like also a long digression about Protestants and influence in the society at many levels.

Recommended.

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

Anna Maria Polidori