Since 2018 (not a case it was the year after I graduated and I had more time to read) I kept track of the books I read on a note on my smartphone. For each year I have just the list of titles and authors in chronological orders without a reading date. Taking a look at some of the titles I remember more where I was or what happened in my life during that period of time more that the content of the book itself.
Starting this year I want to share what I read, maybe you find something interesting!
The entries are sorted by the reading date, except for the books by the same author that I grouped for the sake of simplicity.
Questioni di sangue by Anna Vera Viva. It is the story of a priest that was adopted when he was a child by a wealthy family in Rome. Some decades later, he comes back to his home town of Naples, where besides praying and listening to his people, starts investigating a murder. On top of this, in Naples lives his elder brother who is now a criminal boss. Indeed the title “Matters of Blood” is perfect also for this aspect.
La canzone di Achille (🇮🇹 of The Song of Achilles) by Madeline Miller. I read this book since it got high praise by Elena. She has good taste and I was not disappointed. Miller retells the story of Achilles and Patroclo in an amusing and inspiring way. If you got sleepy during literature classes, I can assure that is a great substitute.
I baffi (🇮🇹 of La Moustache) by Emmanuel Carrère. It’s a relatively short book talking about a man that one day decides to shave his mustaches for fun. No one seems to care and when it starts to question his wife and friends they tell him he never had them. Is he crazy or victim of a subtle conspiracy? The last few pages are shocking and hard to forget.
L’Avversario by Emmanuel Carrère (🇮🇹 of L’Adversaire). The true story of a man that killed his whole family. The motivation? He has lied about his work, studies and basically everything for over 20 years. The story is really tough, nevertheless I preferred I baffi.
Impossible Owls by Brian Philips. A collection of essays by one of the firms of Grandland. Owls are the fil rouge of the book that goes from the Idaho race to a very touching personal story by the author flying through Japan, Area 55, the former British colonies and somewhere else. My favorite ones are the Alaska one and the personal one.
Innocente: Una storia vera (🇮🇹 of The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town) by John Grisham. My first no young adult book was by him and so I keep a tie with this author. This is the real story of Ron Williamson, a man unjustily accused of killing a woman and his years in jail. It is shocking to see how errors are made in the justice system and how brittle sometimes are the proofs.
Riusciranno i nostri eroi a trovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Sud America? by Antonio Manzini. The number of characters in the title is inversely proportional to the pages in the novel. It’s a short installment in the Rocco Schiavone series focused on the adventure of Rocco, Brizio and Furio looking for Sebastiano in South America. It’s a light read, almost a standalone with respect to the main storyline.
Tutti i particolari in cronaca by Antonio Manzini. Being a fan of the author I wanted to read his book even if it was not about Rocco. The main character Dottor Cappai works in the archive of his city justice palace. But when is out of the office he pursuits diligently a plan leveraging his acumen and patience. The story is told by the point of view of Mr Cappai and a journalist. Overall is a good book but I did not like the end. Probably comparing Rocco Schiavone’s series to other works is a little unfair.
Regina rossa - Lupa nera - Re bianco trilogy by Juan Gómez-Jurado.
Think about a police pair made of a genius British-Spanish woman with many idiosyncrasies and smart-street Basque gay cop with incredible strength. Here you have Antonia Scott and Jon Gutiérrez. They work for the Spanish branch of a secret European police to solve high profile cases.
Regina rossa (🇮🇹 of Reina roja). I started this book on my way to Madrid remembering words of appraisal by my mom. So you can guess the surprise when I found out the actions are set there. Jon joins Antonia as her heavy-lifter Watson to solve a homicide and the kidnapping of the members of 2 wealthy families. Brilliantly written and high-paced. I liked the author style and some scenes are awesomely described, for instance the hell that takes place when the special squad enters the apartment of a suspect.
Lupa nera (🇮🇹 of Loba negra). The second book in the series looks like an intermezzo between the first and the third. Antonia and Jon have are chasing the wife of a man in the Russian mafia making business in Malaga that just got killed. But they are not the only ones looking for her, a deadly killer is targeting her. I liked more the characters rather than the plot, but still a good novel.
Re bianco (🇮🇹 of Rey blanco). The third book is close to the level of the first one. Antonia has to face her worse enemy, a villain as smart as her helped by a person from her past. Jon is helping her as usual risking his life at unprecedent levels. The billain is probably too gifted, but you need to come up with a really strong character to play against Antonia. Nice end of the trilogy.
Cucina in giallo (collection of short stories). This is the typical collection of mysteryish short stories by Sellerio). This one is centered around cooking (after all we are Italians) and many famous authors contribute with a story going from murders through minor illegal activities and anything in between. My favorite is Marco Malvaldi’s one starring the old grandpas of “BarLume” that take part to the trial for plagiarism of a recipe, where is discussed the role of creativity and AI.
Vita in vendita (🇮🇹 of 命売ります (Inochi Urimasu)) by Yukio Mishima. Hanio is a young Japanese man that attempts suicide without succeeding. So, he decides, to publish on a newspaper an ad in which he sells his life. This apparently dumb decision makes Hanio live several adventures meeting weird characters such as mobsters, vampires (not the Twilight type) and even crazier people. A surreal story well told and worth the read. By the way, the author of this book is mentioned in Impossible Owls on the essay about Japan.
Le otto montagne by Paolo Cognetti. As a good chunk of the entries in this list Elena had already read it. An adaptation was available on Netflix, so I decided to read it first. It’s an emotional book talking about Pietro a boy from the city who spends the summer on a little town on the mountains with his mother and father (during his short time off work). Here he mets Bruno a guy living all year in the town. They develop a strong friendship and the novel unfolds from there. The story deals with important themes in life such friendship, child-father relationship, memories and nature. I did not expect to get so involved (mostly because I prefer seaside to mountains). In the end we have not yet watched the movie.
Cecità by José Saramago (🇮🇹 of Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira). I have never read the work of a Nobel prize winner before. The book was on Elena’s shelf of books to read, when I read the description it seemed like something that I could appreciate. An epidemy of a particular form of blindness spreads through a city. I really enjoyed the fact that the characters had no name but were named after their profession or some feature make it more generic. Also you have to adapt to Saramago’s prose that does not quotes for dialogues but just commas and capital letters. It sounds weird but once you get used to it, it just flows. A true masterpiece.
Stoner by John Williams. On r/books it was a sensation last here. So after mulling over some time I decided to buy it and read it during our vacation in Norway). When my copy arrived was in the Italian translation and I was a little disappointed so I wanted to taste it in the original version. I reordered a copy in a hurry and it arrived just in time. The cool thing is that Elena choose to read the Italian version, since it was already available, along with me. It was an incredible experience, because I read some chapters with Elena having in front the fantastic view of the fjords. Anyway, it’s focus on the fictional life of William Stoner a literature professor of humble origins. In this book nothing really happens (My grandma read it too, and did not appreciate it because of this). It’s just the ordinary life of a man with his passions, issues and limits. I have mixed feeling over all because, I could resonate with him in some chapters while in others I would throw the book on the couch. And some of the characters make your hands hitch, but I guess that’s a good reaction!
Il codice dell’illusionista by Camilla Läckberg e Henrik Fexeus (🇮🇹 Box). My mom is a great fan of Läckberg and said that was a nice coming back after her first successes. It follows the investigation of Mina a talented detective with her squad has to face a serial killer that kills its victim with bloody illusionist tricks. For solving the case she asks for the help of Vincent, one of the most famous illusionist of Sweden, since he knows so well this trick. If you love Nordic thrillers that’s one could be for you, I think I will not read the next one.
The big sleep by Raymond Chandler. It’s a classic hard boiled and the first starring Philip Marlowe. I actually came to read this because on the back of one book of Monterossi’s series the main character is described as a modern Philip Marlowe. It is a light read with a sufficiently linear plot. The nice thing is to see how things were depicted in the prohibition era.
Anna Karenina (🇮🇹 of Анна Каренина) by Lev Tolstoy. For some time I wanted to confront myself with some great classics. So after the summer holidays I entered my local bookshop and ask to the librarian to help me choose an heavy Russian classic. It was challenging, but was formative and 20 pages a day I got through it in less than 2 months. A man that was there told “you know what happens to Anna, right?” I probably was the only one there not knowing. Anyway I would have avoid the description of the haunting, where for dozens of paragraphs are described different preys and stuff. I really liked the chapter on the death of Nikolai Levin, is so excruciating but real.
Metaphors we live by by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. This was the only heavy non fiction book that I read this year. I have already told it was an heavy reading? I read a chapter here and there for months to complete it, since it felt a little bit too repetitive. Now that I outlined all the negatives point, I can tell what I really liked. Getting to learn that metaphors are not just figure of speech but structure that we use to think and in the end live our lives. It was so formative that I was thinking to write a piece about it. Just a little example? Using the metaphor “love is war” we frame it in a way that justify the verbs conquering a person, falling in love, feeding from a relationship. Using “love is a journey” points to other characteristics of this emotion.
La vegetariana (🇮🇹 of 채식주의자) by Han Kang. It tells the story of a woman who decides to overturn her diet and the effects on her body and psych. The narrators are 3 family members that describe their thoughts about her transformation. Many crudes scenes are scattered in the novel together with vivid images. I could see exactly in my mind the scene described in the first pages of the second chapter. At the beginning of the third chapter hit me really hard. I really liked this book by 2024 Nobel laureate!
Iniziazione by Sabrina Quaranta. Again suggested by the local librarian. It talks about a religious cerimony that every year is celebrated in memory of the time Holy Mary saved the village from plague. In the present, Anna comes back after years into the town to close some family business and she has to face what happened the night of the celebration 30 years before when one of the guys in the representation disappeared. Remote past, recent past and present are interwoven nicely in this novel.
La storia di un matrimonio (🇮🇹 of The Story of a Marriage) by Andrew Sean Greer. The title says it all. It’s the story of af a marriage. What is not written in the cover is that in the relationship between Pearlie and Holland, their past and their present threatened by a person that wants to break the couple. The story is set in San Francisco during the Korea War and has many plot twists (the best one is at the end of the first chapter). Overall a nice book.
I miei stupidi intenti by Bernardo Zannoni. In my Unasked for Sellerio (pocket) books I listed this as one book of the publishing house I would like to read. It follows the life of Archie a beech marten, in a world where animals can talk and have a lot in common with humans, from his birth in a family with limited resources to his adulthood going through many hardships and learning experiences. Some passages of the novel are pretty crude and other make you reflect on the importance of reading and writing. For sure a peculiar and enjoyable book.
Questo sangue masticato by Francesco Aloia. Here we go again with a suggestion by the librarian of an independent library in my city. I asked for a good Italian book to close the year and he proposed this by an emergent author. Quite amusingly the title and the city where the action takes place are the same as the first book I read in January. But this is not a novel, it’s the true story of the author’s charismatic grandfather, guilty of 2 homicides, and how these affected the whole family. A great read!
Mort by Terry Pratchett. I kept reading great comments about the Discworld series and I spent weeks deciding which entrypoint to this world. The series is made of 42 books, with several subseries focusing on different characters. In the end I chose to start from the one about Death, the impersonation of death, that takes as his trainee a goofy teenager by the name of Mort. It’s an hilarious book with satiric aspects scattered around the pages. Could you imagine Death going to parties and trying fishing as a hobby?
It has been a great reading year: I managed to go through more books than usual and explored different genres and authors. I plan to keep reading more classics in the next months and add some more non fiction too.