Gli Amori Difficili, by Italo Calvino

This is such a wonderful book I don't think I can write a proper review. I always loved Calvino's books, and this was the first one I read in Italian - thanks to Matteo B. Bianchi's books not being translated, I started reading Italian, which has been a source of immense joy. Such a beautiful language! There were a lot of words whose meaning I didn't know, but I knew enough - and I'm learning - to read it fluently.

It's a collection of short stories, and they're so good one wishes they would never end so one could keep the pleasure of reading them forever. Not many authors are able to write such good short stories - Maupassant and Chekhov are a few of them. Calvino manages to describe feelings and situations so perfectly, and one can read a number of layered meanings. La Formica Argentina, for instance, is just perfect. But all the stories are excellent. They made me want to reread the Calvino books I loved.

Marco, by Saleem Haddad

Marco is a wonderfully beautiful short film by Saleem Haddad, the author of the excellent boo <i>Guapa. It's moving, sometimes heartbreaking, beautifully shot and featuring outstanding acting. And it's so important to tell the tales of the refugees, to remind how they are people like us, with stories and families and feelings. I cannot but highly recommend watching it.

Generations of Love - Extensions, by Matteo B. Bianchi

Reading this book is pure delight. I had loved Generations of Love a few years ago, and I enjoyed so much more the extended version now, for several reasons. And one of them was undoubtedly being able to read it in Italian - tired to wait for a translation, I read the author's book Maria Accanto (also delightfully funny) in Italian, and I found it was not that hard to understand, so I bought this one last December in Rome. Italian is a wonderful language, it makes one feel good just to hear its music in one's mind.

The book is a gem of coming of age literature, and the added chapters are excellent, some of them - like the ones dealing with the narrator's granny and parents - positively hilarious (I actually laughed out loud in the train while reading them).

So, another reason I loved to read it was that I became much more comfortable with my Italian; so not only am I starting to read 'tina, the magazine edited by Matteo Bianchi, as I'm starting a Calvino book (one of my favourite Italian writers).