A Grande Transformação, de Karl Polaniy

 

What a wonderful book, as relevant, or possibly even more relevant, now than when it was written. It completely demolishes the neo-liberal dogma of the supposed advantages and “naturalness” of unregulated free markets. It explains intelligently, clearly and common-sensically how economic policy is a choice, a political choice.

And that choice should respect human rights, namely the right to the pursuit of happiness; so economy policy should be directed to serve people’s interests and not the other way around.

This should be a mandatory reading for anyone interested in economics, politics and sociology. It’s always amazing and frustrating how we haven’t learnt anything from History.

Ensaios, de George Orwell

 

I love to read George Orwell's writings. He is the epitome of what a Leftist should be - caring about your fellow humans, and keeping a perfect balance about the individual and the common good. 

Intelligent, accurate, and up to the point, he always keeps his common sense and critical reasoning, as we all should do. 

The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer

 I had this book on my shelf for over 15 years; always put it off reading thinking it might be too difficult. But I was wrong - the translation into modern English is very easily readable, and I expect it reasonably keeps the original tone, at least the rhyming and the spirit. 

It's a wonderful book, witty and entertaining, and extremely informative regarding the life, humour and moeurs of the Middle Ages. It's not as good as the fabulous Decameron, but it's close. 

I'm glad I read the beautifully illustrated book from Folio, the medieval art is just stunning.

Les Années, de Annie Ernaux

 

What a wonderful book, I'm so happy I got to know Annie Ernaux thanks to Saleem Haddad (another great writer, btw). It is a wonderful history of he 20th century, told by a personal memoir by a keen observer. I felt so totally identified with her thoughts and memories from the times I lived through. 

Monter en ville, rêver, se faire jouir et attendre, résumé possible d'une adolescence en province.

Pourtant, ils n'auraient jamais vivre là. [...] Ils désiraient qu'il reste toujours dans le monde des pays sans progrès pour les transporter ainsi en arrière.

Sauver quelque chose du temps où l'on ne sera plus jamais. 

Yes, all our lives' experiences will fade away. But that's exactly why testimonies like this are so important. 

Rimini, di Pier Vittorio Tondelli

I read Pier Vittorio Tondelli's Separate Chambers many years ago, and loved it; later I read Altri Libertini and Pao Pao in French translation, also very good. So now, that I can read Italian more or less fluently, I bought Rimini in Milan.

It's a very good book, it reminded me somehow of a Robert Altman movie (maybe that's why the author said it was supposed to be like Nashville?), a turn pager, about the touristic boom in the 80s in the Italian Riviera. Reading it it really brought me back to the 80s. 

 

Berättelser ur min levnad, av Vilhelm Moberg

 I read the Emigrants saga a few years ago, and loved it. Last year, I found this book in the street bookmarket at Drottningsgata, and bought it. I was glad I did it. The Swedish was not too hard to understand with my limited knowledge of the language, and the essays are truly interesting and a great read. I particularly liked the ones about the books he read - a most heartfelt depiction of the pleasure and importance of reading - and about the writing of the Emigrants series.

Att skriva är ett sätt att leva. 

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe

 

This is a wonderful book, maybe the best I've read about the African meet with the colonial powers. Beautifully written, from the perspective of an African, it doesn't portray Africans as hopeless victims, but as people like we are, caught in a clash of cultures and power. This is how we must think of Africans - not better or worse than us, just like us, wanting the sae things - family, dignity, self value. 

Utopia for Realists - and how we can get there, by Ruger Bregman

 

This is a really good book. It makes a case for the universal income, the fifteen hour workweek and the abolishing of borders, in a most intelligent way. I think this is the way the left should go, solidarity. That's what we need, that's what's being leftist is all about.

A Guerra das Salamandras, de Karel Capek

 

I don't know how I had never heard about this book - it's excellent, a classic in its genre. Witty and cruelly funny, it satirizes capitalism, colonialism and human nature in a most implacable way. It's a timeless subject, and superbly dealt with. I highly recommend it.

A Fairly Honorable Defeat, by Iris Murdoch

 

This is a very good book, the second I read by Iris Murdoch (after The Sea, The Sea). It's most engaging from the beginning, so full of dialogue that it sounds almost like a play. But what superb dialogue! One cannot stop reading, feeling fascinated by the characters and their actions, and all the mind manipulations; even if sometimes farfetched, they always come as plausible. It's really a master's work. 

La Testa Perduta di Damasceno Monteiro, de Antonio Tabucchi

 I like Antonio Tabucchi's books, especially Afirma Pereira. This is another very good book, and I was happy to be able to read it in italian, in just 2 days. It was funny to read a book whose action is set in Portugal in italian, and it's a really good read. 

Passeggiate Africane, by Alberto Moravia

 

A very good travel book, beautifully written by a keen observer of nature and history. I particularly liked his non judgemental attitude, his depiction of Africa is engaging, respectful and witty. It made me remember issues like the apartheid, and it made me wishing to be in  Africa, to know it better, something I always wished but postponed. 

Black Boy, by Richard Wright

 

This is such a powerful book, it is often painful to read it. The story is a terrible account of what was like being black in the Jim Crow South, and the author writes beautifully and implacably. One can understand how racism is so embedded in the US culture, especially in the South, because this kind of values don't disappear in decades. 

Diaries, volume 1, 1939-1960, by Christopher Isherwood

 

After hearing and reading about him for so many years, I only recently actually read something by Christopher Isherwood - The Berlin Stories, which is such a wonderful book it made me want to read more of his work. Being related to Bloomsbury and the American post-WWII scene, I was curious to read his diaries. 

And I liked it; he led an interesting life and was friends with lots of interesting people, from Auden and Greta Garbo to Aldous Huxley and Ivan Moffatt. But I was hoping for more, somehow it feels like he's too restrained, he records his life somewhat shallowly, maybe because he repeatedly says he's keeping the journal as a form of discipline. Then there is his attitude concerning religion, which as a stark atheist I cannot relate to, even if his stand is the one I can accept - never proselizing, and not denying life's pleasures or complexities. Guess it was a way to deal with his inner demons and depressions, and if it worked for him one cannot really criticise it, but still. 

Anyway, it's beautifully written, and it's a great depiction of the life in Hollywood in the post war years. And I still want to read more of Isherwood, I think his novels will be more engaging than his diaries. 

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.

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).

Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, by Plutarch

What a wonderful read! Plutarch's Lives show us how human nature didn't change a bit since antiquity, how human goals, flaws and greatness have been really the same always. The writing is beautiful, we really feel engaged in those men's lives, and I ended up wishing there were more lives described, like Augustus' or Nero's. His account is so extremely vivid, it seems strange how this was written so many centuries ago. This is why I do love to read history books, they are such a help to understanding human nature.

Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell

Another wonderful book by Garth Greenwell. The writing is exquisitely beautiful, and he really can dig in our deepest feelings - of desire, shame, awkwardness, joy. I feel awed at his capacity to convey our deepest feelings, at how he probes our human nature, enacting them in short stories with no need of lecturing, the stories themselves and the way he tells them are quite enough. He's the best writer about desire since Proust. And he's also the best writer of sexual scenes I know of, better than D.H. Lawrence and Edmund White. It's not easy to depict sex, but he manages it beautifully. I highly recommend this book, as all writing by Garth.

The Professor's House, by Willa Cather

Willa Cather was a name I was familiar with for a long time, but I had never felt the wish to read anything by her; maybe because if her name, that somehow evoked in my mind an idea of light, "pink", literature, or because I really didn't know anything about her, being out of the major literary circles of her time.

And then I read a few Facebook posts by Garth Greenwell highly praising her books, and since I highly regard his literary taste (his opinions made me already discover several very good authors, like Iris Murdoch), I decided to give her a try, with The Professor's House.

Once again, I was not disappointed. It's an excellent book - the writing beautifully elegant, the characters engaging and real, the story somewhat melancholic but at the same time sweetly optimistic, dealing with life's achievements and what this notion really means. Always relevant issues, never out of date - and after all, human nature has not changed for centuries, or even millennia, so a really good author is always actual.

He had no more thought of suicide than he had thought of embezzling. He had always regarded it as a grave social misdemeanor – except when it occurred in very evil times, as a form of protest. Yet when he was confronted by accidental extinction, he had felt no will to resist, but had let chance take its way, as it had done with him so often.

He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he would have to learn to live without sherry.

In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love – if once one has ever fallen in.

A man has got only so much in him; when it’s gone he slumps. Even the first Napoleon did.

So, it was a great find, and I'm sure I'll read more of her books.

Laterna Magica, av Ingmar Bergman

I love Ingmar Bergman's movies, and I liked his book Den Goda Viljan very much. So, I was looking forward to read Laterna Magica, and I was not disappointed. It's a wonderful memoir; Bergman has a sensitive and intelligent mind, he analyses his life experiences, from family and work, in a most candid and interesting way. One has an understanding of his life and the origins of his movies, besides lots of interesting anecdotes about actors, directors, etc, from Greta Garbo to Charlie Chaplin.

His writing is elegant and engaging, I'm glad I was able to read it in Swedish.