Thursday 12 March 2015

The Overcoat and the Nose by Nikolaj Gogol

How could I not read Gogol for so long? How, how, how?

Dostoevskij said "We are all born under Gogol's overcoat", and after reading him I can fully understand what he meant. Most of the writers were inspired by him, by his sarcasm, by his talking to the reader.
Maybe in this sense it was good I read him "later", so I could still appreciate the writers he inspired.

The strong idea of reading Gogol came after watching a great movie: The Namesake, adapted from a great book by Jhumpa Lahiri, in which the main character is called Gogol after the writer, for a circumstance that you should discover by reading the book or watching the movie. So after that I had a strong desire to read Gogol and understand why there was such a feeling toward this writer.

The writing is so sharp and somehow funny, a must read in everyone life!

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Maus by Art Spiegelman

I finished this book weeks ago, but I was not ready to write a review. The punch in my stomach was still strong and bleeding; a book that you can only pretend to not have read to maybe try to forget it.
But let's start from the beginning. Maus (the German for "mouse") is a graphic novel, the main characters are indeed Mice and Cats, in an eternal fight for survival.
But soon you would forget about the identity of the characters and you will just be left with the "ass-holes vs innocent fight". That the book is about the Holocaust you will need just few pages to understand. The book is  actually a memoir of Vladek Spiegelman, the father of Art, a survivor of Auschwitz
You think it has been said already everything about it? Well, I personally never get tired of reading of such an absurd and WRONG period of our times, but, in general, this book will still tell you something you haven't found elsewhere.

The graphic makes the words stronger and more incisive, and the narrative will just tell you things without any filter. No imagination, no suggestions here are possible.The truth, nude and crude as it is.

I think this book is important for the new generations, that won't have the direct narrative from fathers and grandfathers, and that won't probably have that curiosity to understand a period too far from them. This is a good way to give the message and to keep the memory up for one of the worst and tragic period of our history.

Sunday 8 March 2015

The melancholy death of Oyster boy & other stories by Tim Burton

It happens like this, you fish through second hand books and one of them just pop out silently screaming to be bought. That's what happened here.

You go back home and read aloud what I like to define "bed stories for adults".
The stories are all so sweet and funny at the beginning, all in rhyme, which gives them a happy touch, then the laugh would immediately stop in your throat to give space to deep sorrow.




Creepy, creepy, creepy, but so addicting!!! A little treasure!

I will miss you Oyster Boy...