Tag: italy

who wants to help ?

~ winstonsdad ~ 23 Comments

I would love some people to help me out with the around the world challenge have a basic format but ideas and offers of help most welcome .THE IDEA SO FAR IS 11 CATEGORISE no order but a year-long challenge ,thinks I need help with are using mister linky ,making a button for blogs to show any help or offers of support be most welcome . here is what the categories would be –

  1. EUROPE (NORTHERN) -ie Germany ,Holland ,Sweden ,Denmark , Finland,Russia ,Poland ,uk ,Iceland ,Ireland ..
  2. EUROPE(SOUTHERN)-ie spain ,Portugal,Italy ,Greece,Turkey Balkans …
  3. AFRICA (FRENCH AFRICA) The west of africa mainly Senegal ,Cotes de Ivorie including books in other language from these areas in english.
  4. AFRICA (ENGLISH SPEAKING ) southern and eastern africa IE Kenya ,Ghana ,South Africa also books in other languages translated in to english
  5. ARABIC books from the arabic world Algeria ,Egypt etc
  6. ASIA  (Korea ,Japan and China )
  7. ASIA rest of asia
  8. AMERICAS (NORTH) US AND CANADA BOOKS
  9. AMERICAS (CENTRAL) plus Caribbean
  10. AMERICAS (SOUTH )
  11. AUSTRALIA ,NEW ZEALAND AND OCEANIA

There are categories I ve in mind and let people read in what ever order they want but one a month for challenge leaving spare month as we all have things crop up and may need time in hand .

WHAT DO YOU THINK ?

I want this to be fun my personnel goal was to read books from 52 countries this year I ve nearly done that in twelve months ,its given me such a scope of books ,I just in a little way want to pass that on to other people in a fun way ,all the best stu and winston .

Don quixote week 4 a florentine interlude and a escape from moorish hands

~ winstonsdad ~ 10 Comments

Well I never ,the novel the tale of inappropriate curiosity  within a novel that start last week continued the Florentine tale that the Priest is reading as our hero slept in the bed in the inn ,is a tale of women love and honor in florence and is a wonderful piece of metafiction ,as it even seems written by a different hand than that of Cervantes ,I was well and truly enchanted with the story of Anselmo ,Camila ,Lothario and leenalo ,and was annoy when the don interrupted it ,he awakes slash a red wine skin and thinks it is the blood and head of huge giant he had been dreaming of engaging in battle ,but then we return and find that Camila has been found out and promise fidelity well for a time ,the priest strangely like this story of infidelity ,next there are som e arrivals at the inn where don sancho and the priest are held up and we enter in to another tale told by on of these new guest don Fernando and a lady and the captive Ruy who’s tale of escape from the moorish world we are being told his capture and attempts to escape the moors ,a tale of daring and the sea .

the two tales we end and start in this section show with out a doubt Cervantes talent and also his continuing influence on the modern written word ,the novel with in a novel is still being used as a tool in modern fiction in books such as kaviler and clay by Michael Chabon .

WHAT HAVE YOU ENJOYED ?

WHAT INFLUENCES ON MODERN FICTION DO YOU SEE ?

A private affair by beppe fenoglio

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

A private affair

notes -Beppe Fengolio (1922-1963) this is one of a number of novels published by Beppe this one was published after his early death at age 40 ,he was one of the leading lights of the neo realism movement post world war two that produced great films like bicycle thieves ,this work also contains his other main theme the rural area of  northern italy and is the setting for this book .his most famous book is Johnny partisan that was also published after his death in 1968. 

the book – 

follows a young partisan Milton  as he returns Langhe area of northern Italy , in search of a sweetheart Fulvia  that he meet in Torino  and had been writing to during the war on arrival he talks to a local inn keeper in the village   and finds that in his absences that Fulvia had been an affair with one of his friends Giorgio a fellow partisan .He then finds out that Giorgio had been captured by francos fascist forces and is in prison he then sets out to find him and what has been  happening between Giorgio and Fulvia whilst he has been away fighting ,along the way meeting the disintegrating face and places of the war ravage italy .til he himself runs in to some fascists in some woods … 

his mouth half open ,his arms hanging by his sides,Milton stood looking at Fulvia’s villa ,all alone up there on the hill that slopped towards the town of Alba .His heart stopped beating :indeed it seemed to have absconded inside his body . 

the opening of private affair translated from italian by Howard Curtis 

my view – 

This book seems to float along as i followed Milton on his quest so to speak through a broken and divide italy towards the end of the war in Italy ,Beppe seemed to have trodden the ground he wrote about which adds to the realism of this book ,the translation is fluid from Howard Curtis .The use of Milton for the name of the main character also made me think of Milton’s poetry and there is an echo of it in the losing and then trying to find Fulvia ,a sort of personnel paradise lost and regained in Italy .The hell element been the war ravage Italy .

invisible cities by italo calvino

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

there a scene in dead poets society where robin williams stands on a desk and says he’s up there to look at the room different ,well calvino does that in invisinble cities .the main preface of the story is that marco polo is describing to kublai khan all the cities that he has visited on his travels .so as the book unfolds you get brief two to three page descriptions of each city whether real or imagined you never know , interspeed between this are conversations between polo and khan .the descriptions of the cities are clever framing devices for calvino to play with language and type of stories .the main feeling i got from this is to always look at your surroundings you never know what your missing no matter how small