Raymond Carver -Vuoi star zitta, per favore?
The subjects of the twenty-two stories in this first collection by Raymond Carver are already the same as always: men and women on the brink, or already beyond, perdition; unemployed individuals, alcoholics, people incapable of creating and maintaining true and solid emotional relationships.
But, mixed in with the disenchantment that Carver knows how to depict inalienations and lacks, there emerges here and there a more emotional, passionate streak, in some cases an erotic or comical detail. In a word, an affectionately "human" quality.
(quote Einaudi) more
Raymond Carver -Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo d'amore
What do we talk about when we talk about love?
We talk about a glass of gin that spills in a room where two tired couples are arguing.
We talk about old friends who, perhaps out of boredom, perhaps for another reason, unknowingly commit a terrible crime.
We talk about bakers whose birthday cakes have not been picked up.
We talk about gestures that seem insignificant, yet have the power to restore to every life all the grace hidden behind the banality of malice and fear.
Seventeen stories by Raymond Carver, the clearest expression of a writing that, with miraculous simplicity, always gets to the heart of things. (quote Einaudi) more
Dream Theater
Okay, for certain things I can agree with you, but anyone who gives one star to the Dream Theater clearly has their eyes and ears stuffed with ham. The early works are masterpieces; you can call them pretentious, redundant, whatever you want, but if any of you played like any member of that band..., you would be the most arrogant and son of a b...... Even I don't like them, but those who fiercely criticize the early albums, I would make you listen to all of Bob Dylan's live performances every night for the rest of your days in a straitjacket, on repeat... Have fun. more
Chiodos -Bone palace ballet grand coda
horrifying cover, record outside my range, but more than decent! more
Fabrizio De André -Canzoni
transition album. By far the De Andrè album I love the least and it still gets a 4! more
Genesis -A Trick Of The Tail
Entangled, Mad Man Moon, and Ripples are songs touched by something divine, but overall an excellent album, a classy response to Gabriel's departure and what a joy to see everyone so full of energy... more
Pink Floyd -Is There Anybody Out There The Wall Live 1980 - 81
Can a live performance be superior to the studio version?
YES more
Coldplay
Of a sadness bordering on the incomprehensible, both in the writing style, always the same, and in their image of notyounganymorewhomayappealto20some things.... In short, sad. And to think that Chris Martin found himself, every night, with Gwyneth Paltrow in the marital bed.... more
Eugenio Finardi -Sugo
if only this had been the scenario of Italian rock.
An unrepeatable album, together with diesel the monuments of Finardi. more
Lewis Carroll -Le avventure di Alice nel paese delle meraviglie e Al di là dello Specchio
"Age doesn't matter, whether you are important or insignificant: everyone returns to being a child."
Virginia Woolf

- On one hand, this can be read as a parable revealing the absurdities and inconsistencies of adult life; on the other hand, one immediately perceives a sophisticated linguistic skill, where the taste for paradox and pun, nonsense and parody, is expressed with unparalleled inventiveness.
- A classic, therefore, that has inspired many protagonists of twentieth-century literature from Queneau to Nabokov. (cit. Einaudi) more
Erskine P. Caldwell -La via del tabacco
Erskine P. Caldwell is one of those American writers who became a legend and then was forgotten: the extreme harshness with which he depicts the impoverished life of the rural South, which clashes with the easy representations of the American Dream, has not always been appreciated by the moralizing critics (his books were censored several times). (citation Einaudi) more
James M. Cain -La morte paga doppio
The cynical Walter Huff becomes infatuated with Phyllis, the wife of Nirdlinger, one of his clients. A sordid affair arises between the two: with the lover's complicity, Walter devises a plan to get Nirdlinger to sign a life insurance policy, then stages a simulated accident. Although the plan is crafted down to the smallest detail, things start to unravel immediately after the murder. As the police and insurance agents investigate the case, not entirely convinced of the circumstances of Nirdlinger's death, the feelings between Walter and Phyllis dissipate rather quickly; the man soon realizes that the woman has skillfully used him from the very beginning. He thought he was the mastermind of the plan, but in reality, he was merely a pawn in the woman's diabolical scheme. (quoted from Wiki) more
James M. Cain -Mildred Pierce
How cruel, and blind, that sweet mother’s heart is.
Muddy and hypnotic, the novel where the American dream turns into damnation.
The story of a woman determined not to succumb in the years of the Depression becomes the dark mirror of a society where work does not liberate, but makes one a slave and a torturer, where oppression is a habit, and violence is always imminent. (quoted Einaudi) more
Anthony Burgess -Arancia meccanica
It's the story of Alex, a hoodlum always ready to use a knife, the leader of a gang of "toughs" with whom he repeats every night, on the sidewalks of the suburbs, the game of violence.

"My hero, or antihero, Alex, - wrote Anthony Burgess, - is truly evil, at a level perhaps inconceivable, but his wickedness is not the product of theoretical or social conditioning: it is a personal undertaking in which he has embarked with full clarity.
My parabola, and that of Kubrick, want to assert that a world of consciously assumed violence is preferable to a world programmed to be good or innocuous...
A Clockwork Orange was supposed to be a kind of manifesto on the importance of being able to choose." more
Anthony Burgess -Trilogia malese
"It is time to understand the nature of the East, and of Islam. After Vietnam, we can no longer afford to consider those distant regions of the world as material for fairy tale characters, like the popular yet reprehensible Sandokan."
Anthony Burgess more
Edward Bunker -Educazione di una canaglia
- The book in which the author tells the true story of his life: from his first entrance to San Quentin prison at seventeen to present-day Los Angeles.
- The experiences in the worst prisons of California, on the streets of Los Angeles, and in the underbelly of Hollywood have credentialed him to write some of the most disturbing and powerful modern novels about prison.
- Whether he's smoking a joint while sitting in the gas chamber chair, or picking up a knife used by a serial killer, or swimming among the marbles of the opulent Neptune pool in San Simeon, California, Bunker simply lays out his goods, bare and raw. The result is chilling, yet not devoid of a proud morality, because it is pure truth. (cit. Einaudi) more
Michail Bulgakov -Cuore di cane
« Uuuuhhh!!!
Look at me, I'm dying.
The storm howls the de profundis at the door and I howl along with it.
It's done, I'm done for!
A delinquent in a dirty cap, the cook from the staff canteen at the Central Council of National Economy, dumped boiling water on me and burned my left side.
What a scoundrel!
And he’s a proletarian too! »
(Chapter I) more
Michail Bulgakov -Il Maestro e Margherita
"The Devil is the most striking character in Bulgakov's great posthumous novel. He appears one morning before two citizens, one of whom is enumerating the proofs of God's existence. The newcomer doesn’t share this opinion... But there’s much more: he was also present at the second interrogation of Jesus by Pontius Pilate and provides a detailed account in a chapter that is perhaps the most astonishing in the book... Shortly thereafter, the demon performs at the Variety Theatre in front of a huge audience... A novel-poem, or if you will, a show in which many characters intervene, a book where an almost cruel realism merges or mixes with the highest of possible themes: that of the Passion." Eugenio Montale more