Stanlio

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The story tells of a young marchioness with red hair, Sierva María de Todos los Ángeles, the unwanted daughter of a lazy and bored marquis and a smuggler. She grows up with the servants, learning the African dialects of the slaves and their rituals. The deep hatred her mother directs at her from a young age and her father's complete indifference cause the girl to become increasingly isolated from the civilized world as she grows up, finding solace only in solitude and honing her ability to lie to everyone about everything. (wiki)
"On the day they were to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at 5:30 in the morning to await the arrival of the boat carrying the bishop?" (Crónica de una muerte anunciada)

The story is based on a true event that took place in a small town in Colombia, which Márquez drew inspiration from thirty years later to write the novel.
Gabriel García Márquez: Foglie morte
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
The novel is narrated from three alternating perspectives: thirty-year-old Isabel, her nine-year-old son, and her father, a former colonel of the liberal army during the thousand days' war. The story unfolds in a single day, September 12, 1928, when the lifeless body of a doctor whose name no one knows is discovered; he has hanged himself in the house where he has lived a hermit's life for years. In Macondo, everyone has hated him since ten years earlier, when he refused to offer aid to the wounded during the crackdown on popular uprisings; from that moment, he has lived surrounded by general hatred, which does not even wane in the face of death. (wiki)
Compared to the previous stories, in this novel, naturalism is tempered by a cynical humor and the proliferation of a series of symbols such as the rooster, the waiting for the mail, and hunger. The rooster, in particular, as a reminder of the deceased son and a vehicle of solidarity among the villagers, symbolizes the redemption of a continent, Latin America, that will never happen. (wiki)
Gabriel García Márquez: La mala ora
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
Leaving home to go to work, César Montero finds a sheet of paper with a satire nailed to his front door. He goes to the musician Pastor's house and shoots him in cold blood, slaughtering him in front of his mother's eyes. The mayor arrests him, then in a spur of legalism entrusts the investigation into the murder to Judge Arcadio, whose predecessor was slaughtered after making it clear that he did not want rigging in the facade elections organized by the regime... (wiki)
Metaphorical interpretation of Colombian history, from its foundation to the contemporary state, brings forth various local myths and legends through the story of the Buendía family, whose different generations intertwine with the life of the country and allow for the narration, albeit with the distorting mirror of the linguistic mask, of the historical events of modern Colombia... (wiki)
"That morning I had chosen between life and death. I had decided on death, and yet I was still alive, with a piece of an oar in my hand, ready to continue fighting for life. To keep fighting for the only thing that I no longer cared about." (The protagonist's despair) - The account of the episode, which actually took place, was provided by the protagonist to the writer when he was still a young journalist. - It tells the misadventures of Luis Alejandro Velasco, a sailor of the Colombian navy, who fell overboard from his ship. The ship had set sail on February 22, 1955, from the port of Mobile, Alabama, bound for Cartagena, Colombia. On February 28, he and seven other crew members were thrown into the sea by a wave, which dealt the final blow to a ship whose stability was compromised by the presence of a cargo of refrigerators, washing machines, radios, and televisions. (wiki)
On the day of the dictator's death, who for time immemorial has governed the fate of the state, a crowd of citizens bursts into the presidential palace and watches in astonishment the countless bird cages, the dung fires that the general used to light at night, the cows grazing in the courtyards. Once already, the old dictator had made it seem as though he was dead when his lookalike, Patricio Aragonés, was poisoned in a plot... (wiki)
Florentino Ariza, a clerk with a passion for poetry, falls in love at first sight with the teenager Fermina Daza, and, with the complicity of the girl's aunt, he begins a predominantly epistolary romantic relationship with her. However, the girl's father discovers the bond between the young lovers and, furious, moves with his daughter to a distant village for some time in order to make her forget the suitor: Lorenzo Daza, a ruthless mule trader, indeed aims to marry his beautiful daughter to a man far more important than a mere telegraph operator and cannot bear the thought of the young couple's infatuation obstructing his plans for social advancement. (wiki)
It recounts the final years of the famous general Simón Bolívar and the memories of the events that made him a liberator, retracing the loves, adventures, risks, and passions of a man—before being a general—whose ideological strength for freedom swept Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela to independence from Spanish rule in South America. (wiki)
Posthumously published in 1960, Gurdjieff not only introduces us to his teachings, but also lifts the veil on his life before arriving in France. For him, however, as for the ancient sages, veiling and unveiling are the same gesture, so everything will be found in these memories except for a cut of documentary accuracy: these memories, astonishing like a lavish adventure novel, animated in every line by a skillful buffoonery and a spiky brusqueness, narrated in the same manner he employed in life, with an Eastern simplicity that bewildered for its appearance of naivety, are for Gurdjieff primarily a tool to initiate the reader into his doctrines, to subject him to a series of shocks and paradoxes that could guide him towards awakening.
(from Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Il primogenito dei Ferchaux
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- what interests Simenon is the game played between two beings initially connected by a secret complicity: the old man, who believes he can find something of himself in the boy but also senses his insubstantiality and cruelty, and the young man, who after being captivated by the adventurer ultimately ends up holding him in his power... (cit. Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: In caso di disgrazia
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
With a master's touch, Simenon takes us through all the stages of a turbulent and tragic amour fou, gifting us one of his most intensely erotic, heartbreaking, and passionate novels. (cit. Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: I Pitard
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- Finally, after so many years commanding others' ships, Captain Lannec has managed to buy himself a vessel; and despite his mother-in-law's protests and his wife's tears, he has named it Fulmine del Cielo, to evoke his favorite curse.
- Little by little, as if by an unappealable court ruling that the ancients called Fate, what was meant to be the first, triumphant voyage of the Fulmine del Cielo will turn into a nightmare... (quoted from Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Gli intrusi
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- they think of him: that he is a wasted talent, a lawyer who no longer takes on cases, a grumpy and useless drunk hiding at home like a wounded animal.
But that night, suddenly, something happens that forces the bear to leave its den: a gunshot, a shadow that fades down a hallway, and in a disused room on the second floor a man dying before his eyes.
What is that intruder doing in his house?
Who killed him?
What secrets does the old home hide behind its drowsy ancient walls?
And what torments his daughter, another stranger, behind that calm and submissive appearance? (cit. Adelphi)
With an overly long coat and an incongruous fur hat on his head, a pale and feverish young man disembarks, on the eve of the Day of the Dead, in La Rochelle from a cargo ship coming from Trondheim. He will discover that he is the heir to his uncle's vast fortune, a man unknown to him, who lived in fierce solitude. He will also discover that his uncle held all the wealthy notables of the city in his grip, gathered in a sinister syndicate. (cited Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Tre camere a Manhattan
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
New York, night.
A man and a woman walk down Fifth Avenue.
They enter a bar.
They come out.
Another bar.
And they resume walking, tireless, as if there were nothing else they could do but walk: "as if they had always walked like this, through the streets of New York, at five in the morning."
As if the night should never end.
He knows nothing about her, she knows nothing about him.
She wobbles a bit on her heels that are too high... (cit. Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Turista da banane
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
Oscar Donadieu, a sensitive and introverted young man, the last heir of a powerful shipowner clan from La Rochelle, lands in Tahiti dreaming “of immersing himself in nature, of living face to face with it and with it alone, renouncing the comforts of civilization.”
Yet, even during the crossing, someone warned him: “Perhaps it would be better not to disembark and to head straight back to France.”
This way, he would avoid becoming one of those whom the locals disparagingly call “banana tourists,” remnants of tropical life wandering between sad drunkenness, easy girls, squalid nights, and sordid dealings. (quoted from Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: La morte di Belle
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- In a quaint cottage in a quiet American town, an eighteen-year-old girl, Belle Sherman, is murdered. That evening, by chance, Professor Spencer Ashby – who was hosting the young girl, the daughter of a friend of his wife – was left alone in the house with her.
- "The righteous" begin to look at him with suspicion, to find him "different," to isolate him. This is enough to bring back in him ancient disturbances, sexual fantasies, an inner disorder that, after years of a smooth life, he believed to be dormant, repressed. The coroner presses on with his questioning, and the professor's precarious balance crumbles.
- Another reality will emerge, from the shell of horror. (cit. Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Pietr il Lettone
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- Maigret's presence at the Majestic inevitably had something hostile about it.
It was like a block of granite that the environment refused to assimilate.
- Not that he resembled the policemen made popular by caricatures.
He had neither a mustache nor double-soled shoes.
- "He had a particular way of positioning himself in a spot that sometimes proved unpleasant even to many colleagues"
(from Pietr il Lettone)
Georges Simenon: Betty
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
A beautiful woman of scandalous behavior lands on a stool at a bar on the Champs-Élysées, her head muddled by alcohol.
What lies behind?
(quote Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: La Marie del porto
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
Marie of the harbor is a figure that one cannot forget in the vast gallery of Simenon's women: an unassuming girl, a true "still water," who manages to captivate a brisk and bold man, accustomed to winning and commanding.
(cit Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: La neve era sporca
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
Frank, the memorable protagonist of this novel, is nineteen years old and is the son of the attractive madam of a brothel in a Northern city during the Nazi occupation. Cold, aloof, insolent, solitary, Frank secretly desires just one thing: to initiate himself into life. And he believes that the best way to do this is by killing someone without reason. He does. Then he commits other crimes, always in some way gratuitous.
(cit. Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Lettera al mio giudice
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
"I would so much like a man, just one man, to understand me.
And I would wish that man were you."
Thus the narrator addresses his judge, and consequently every reader, at the beginning of this novel. The story that follows is one of love and death, filled with intensity, exaltation, and anguish.
It is the story of a man who feels compelled to kill a woman because he loves her too much.
(cit. Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Hôtel del Ritorno alla Natura
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
This is the first book I skimmed through in the blink of an eye by GS, and then inevitably the others followed in quick succession...

"A German scientist and his companion live in isolation on one of the Galápagos Islands, convinced that by doing so they are leaving behind the corrupted civilization and 'returning to a state of nature.' But Countess von Kleber, accompanied by two gigolos, also has plans for that dazzling fragment of land surrounded by the sea..." (from Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Il testamento Donadieu
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
... one day the chieftain, Oscar the Shipowner, disappears.
From that moment starts this grand and meticulous chronicle, a story of disintegration that first engulfs La Rochelle and then spreads to Paris, transitioning from the sluggish rhythm of a seaside provincial city to the poisoned effervescence of the metropolis.
With the same certainty with which it was upheld, “the Donadieu order” collapses.
And in the collapse, it drags not only the clan but also the one who had been the cold agent of ruin: the social climber Philippe...
(quote from Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Pedigree
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
"Billions, billions and billions of animals on the face of the earth, in the air, in the water, everywhere, ceaselessly, minute by minute, make an effort of all their cells towards a becoming they do not know, like ants crossing precipices dragging burdens a hundred times their size, venturing among mountains of sand or mud and attempting ten times to assault the same obstacle, without their caravan changing course."
Thus they appeared, to Simenon's eye, the early years of his life: countless small gestures and little figures, clumps of pigment on an endless canvas. (cit. Adelphi)
Popinga leaves the house and, closing the door, also steps out of himself; we encounter everything and cannot help but see it through his eyes.
The crime, the terror, the daydreaming, the solitude, the clarity, the meticulousness: they are new pieces on an old chessboard, and with their help, Popinga desperately tries to evade checkmate.
(quoted from Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Lettera a mia madre
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- After years of absence, Georges Simenon returns to Liège to witness the last days of his ninety-year-old mother. In the hospital room, two faded gray eyes are fixated on him: "Why did you come, Georges?"
- They have seen each other little for almost fifty years.
- ... only now does Simenon feel he understands his mother, and at the same time knows almost nothing about her...
(quote Adelphi)
Georges Simenon: Le finestre di fronte
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- We are in Batum, on the Black Sea, in the early years of Stalin. Adil bey is the new Turkish consul.
He begins to look around.
He enters his office, "dirty with that gloomy dirt found in barracks and certain public offices."
He glances outside and sees two people leaning out of the window across the street.
- He spies on the spies, and meanwhile, his own body seems to be affected, a dark rage merging with fear.
And the anguish expands, nothing can stop it.
Against this backdrop, a tale of love, deceit, and death unfolds.
(cit. Adelphi)
Giancarlo De Cataldo: Romanzo criminale
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
A ruthless and bloodthirsty emerging organization seeks to conquer the sky from the outskirts.
Three cursed young heroes with a naïve and terrible dream.
A determined police officer, a chorus of criminals, gamblers, criminologists, journalists, judges, singers, mafiosi, along with corrupt pieces of power and black terrorists.
And the most exclusive brothel in the city.
An epic novel of extraordinary power, the hidden heart of Italy's history laid bare. (einaudi.it)
Gioachino Rossini: L'Italiana in Algeri
DVD Video I have it ★★★★★
"The story of an energetic and strong-willed woman, a woman who challenges men."

quoted Stefano Belisari, known as Elio (the one from Storie Tese)
Gioachino Rossini: Ouvertures
CD Audio I have it ★★★★★
1. William Tell - 11:58
2. Mr. Bruschino - 4:51
3. The Journey to Reims - 7:27
4. The Silk Ladder - 6:01
5. The Thieving Magpie - 9:33
6. The Turk in Italy - 8:27
7. The Italian Girl in Algiers - 8:17
Giuseppe Culicchia: Tutti giù per terra
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★
Walter is a young man from Turin who, in the 1980s, decides to do civilian service at an organization that focuses on the integration of nomads, while also enrolling in the philosophy department, but struggles to pass any exams. After completing his civilian service, he takes on various jobs, eventually becoming a clerk in a bookstore.

The book was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Davide Ferrario in 1994 and starring Valerio Mastandrea, Carlo Monni, Caterina Caselli, Luciana Littizzetto, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Benedetta Mazzini (Mina's daughter...), Vladimir Luxuria, Mara Redeghieri from Üstmamò, and the full Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti, the latter appearing as an examination committee.
Giuseppe Culicchia: Paso doble
Cartaceo I have it ★★★
- This novel aims to be the ideal continuation of the previous one, "Tutti giù per terra," which ended with the protagonist Walter becoming a clerk in a bookstore.
- In the new work, he coexists with Super Mario and Iper Paolo (aspiring models), with Egidio (a complexed member of the League who was abused by former employers), and with director Arnaldo Arnoldi, busy with budgeting issues.
- After leaving for a few days of vacation without notice, he expects to be fired; instead, in his absence, the director caused some problems and was ousted. The choice of an internal replacement falls precisely on Walter, considered the "least unsuitable." With the new salary, Walter's life transforms, and he begins to indulge in all kinds of luxuries...
Giuseppe Culicchia: Bla bla bla
Cartaceo I have it ★★★
The protagonist, nauseated by the routine and banality of modern life, decides to disappear and flees without leaving a trace. He rents a room in a foreign city from a woman abandoned by her husband, who has a fifteen-year-old daughter away at boarding school. He runs out of money and can no longer pay the rent or buy food. The landlady (in love with Italy and Italians…) offers him food and allows him to secretly steal food, even proposing that he stay and live with her. He declines and leaves the house, living like a beggar and reducing himself to hunger, searching for forgotten coins in phone booths, scavenging abandoned food at markets. He then decides to return to his former landlady, who in the meantime has moved in with another man, but while waiting to sell the house, she allows him to use it. Consumed by anger, he destroys everything.
  • MikiNigagi
    11 oct 17
    Basically, Ask the Dust without the beauty of Ask the Dust, in short.
  • Stanlio
    11 oct 17
    The one where Bandini, an aspiring writer, lives on oranges for a while?
    Well, there’s an abyss between the two, but I don’t see many similarities. Maybe it’s because I read it in the early '90s and my memory fails me, but I really can’t find anything similar aside from the hunger and financial struggles.
Groucho Marx: Groucho e io
Cartaceo I have it ★★★★★
- an autobiography of Groucho...
- from the very beginning, from the choice of name (Julius Henry Marx), destined to win the favor of an uncle whose fortune, alas, "turned out to consist of a stolen number nine billiard ball, a box of liver pills...
- Fifty years of American epic pass before us through Groucho's humorous gaze: the youth of the five brothers spent in Yorkville, on Manhattan's East Side, with their father the tailor ("That dad was a tailor was an idea shared by only him")
- we will emerge from this book dazed and happy, as if having watched one of Groucho's best films... (from Adelphi)