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adrmb

Genesis — A Trick Of The Tail | DeRank™: 2,26

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
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dsalva
dsalva

Weather Report — Heavy Weather | DeRank™: 0,00

Could we say 6? more
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dsalva
Can a live performance be superior to the studio version?
YES more
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Dislocation
Dislocation

Coldplay | DeRank™: 0,12

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
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dsalva
dsalva

Eugenio Finardi — Sugo | DeRank™: 2,36

if only this had been the scenario of Italian rock.
An unrepeatable album, together with diesel the monuments of Finardi. more
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Stanlio
"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
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Stanlio
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
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Stanlio
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
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Stanlio
Stanlio

James M. Cain — Mildred Pierce | DeRank™: 0,00

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
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Stanlio
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
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Anthony Burgess — Trilogia malese | DeRank™: 0,00

"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
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Stanlio
- 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
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Michail Bulgakov — Cuore di cane | DeRank™: 0,00

« 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
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Stanlio
"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
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Stanlio
It features a thirty-something lawyer and the chorus of friends who accompany him "on stage": from the public courtrooms to private orgies in the houses of the respectable bourgeoisie, from legal assistance to the new rich of the North-East to wild, drunken nights in trendy nightclubs. Until an external and disturbing element appears within the group - the young Englishwoman Sabine - whom the protagonist falls in love with, entering into conflict with his surroundings, his wife Laura, and his profession, to the point of plunging into a progressive, inescapable hell. more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Emily Brontë — Cime tempestose | DeRank™: 0,00

In the lonely and wild moors of Yorkshire, a tumultuous and destructive love affair unfolds. All the tormented contrasts that ignite between the inhabitants of a comfortable dwelling in the valley and those of a farm on a windy hill converge in the figure of the foundling Heathcliff. The contradictory and poisonous human passions intertwine love with suffering and cruel revenge. The exploration of conflicting affections and extreme emotions does not undermine the adaptable precision of a style that "shatters all parameters of knowledge of human beings, only to breathe such a life into those unrecognizable transparencies as to make them transcend reality" Virginia Woolf. more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Ray Bradbury — Cronache Marziane | DeRank™: 0,00

... the ending of the novel has an optimistic side: if the Earthlings learn to respect their new planet, as seen in the final scene, they could become the Martians themselves.
Of course, this interpretation can be flipped: the final scene could also be viewed as the last mockery of the destroyed civilization of the Martians, whereby the conquerors will define themselves as "Martians," just as the descendants of the exterminators of the Indians define themselves as "Americans."
The value of this book, one of the masterpieces of science fiction of all time, lies precisely in the ambiguity of some key scenes that lead the reader to question fundamental facts of the history of the United States, but more generally the relationships between European civilization and others on the planet... (quote from wiki) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Ray Bradbury — L'estate incantata | DeRank™: 0,00

- Dandelion Wine (in the original title) is a novel set during the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, based on the city of Waukegan, Illinois, where Bradbury grew up.
- The original title refers to a wine made from dandelion petals and other ingredients, commonly citrus. In the story, this wine, prepared by the protagonist's grandfather, is a metaphor that gathers all the joys of summer into a single bottle. The protagonist of the story is Douglas Spaulding, a 12-year-old boy who is vaguely autobiographical. (source: wiki) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Ray Bradbury — Fahrenheit 451 | DeRank™: 0,00

- In novel form, it was first published in 1953 in the emerging magazine Playboy, in the second, third, and fourth issues.
- Set in an unspecified future after 1960, it describes a dystopian society where reading or owning books is considered a crime, for which a special firemen's corps has been established, dedicated to burning every type of volume.
- In 1966, the book was adapted into a film of the same name directed by François Truffaut.
- «Listen to me, Montag: in all our careers, we all get a curiosity about what's in those books; it strikes us like a kind of itch, right? Well, trust me, Montag, there's nothing in there, books have nothing to say!»
(cit. wiki) more
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