the world's strangest books

Edward Brooke-Hitching grew up in a rare book shop, with a rare book dealer for a father. As the author of histories of maps The Phantom Atlas, The Golden Atlas and The Sky Atlas, he has always been “really fascinated by books that are down the back alleys of history”. Ten years ago, he embarked on a project to come up with the “ultimate library”. No first editions of Jane Austen here, though: Brooke-Hitching’s The Madman’s Library collects the most eccentric and extraordinary books from around the world... Alison Flood, The Guardian

Elena Ferrante parla di sé

Rispondendo a domande molto interessanti da parte di traduttori ed editor americani e inglesi.

For Lila and Elena, the experience of reading Little Women is extremely important. What (other) literary figures affected you as an adolescent? Stefanie Hetze, bookseller, Germany

[...] But the book I read and reread obsessively was Wuthering Heights. Today I still find extraordinary the way it describes love, mixing good and bad feelings without any break. Catherine is someone who should be revisited from time to time: she’s useful, when you write, for avoiding the danger of sickly-sweet female characters. The Guardian.

Reading Elena Ferrante in English

Millions of readers in thrall to Elena Ferrante, the secretive and wildly popular Italian novelist, must accept certain conditions.

[...]

And if they are reading Ferrante’s books in English, they are absorbing, whether they realize it or not, the nimble translation work of Ann Goldstein. Joumana Khatib, NYT.

The New American Status Symbol? A Second Passport

As the pandemic has ravaged the United States, some Americans are finding that a second citizenship or permanent residency has a renewed appeal. Valeriya Safronova, NYT.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

The first season of Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” about a brassy 1950s housewife-turned-stand-up-comic, debuted last fall to swoony reviews (including one from the The Times which described Midge Maisel’s “bon mots rattling like ice in a cocktail shaker”). Though the second season of the cult-favorite show has just landed, many fans have hurtled through it at breakneck speed and are already in withdrawal. If you’re one of them, we’ve got some books for you to read. Gal Beckerman and Tina Jordan, New York Times.

I libri consigliati sono: The Group di Mary McCarthy (of course), e poi Seriously Funny di Gerald Nachman (che non conosco), Crazy Salad di Nora Ephron (che adoro) e The Joy of Yiddish di Leo Rosten (This 1968 lexicon codified words like “kvetch” and “schlep” in American English). 

E con questi consigli di lettura per le vacanze e questa immagine piena di energia e allegria auguro a tutti BUON NATALE E FELICE ANNO NUOVO!

Tradurre Natalia Ginzburg

“Dribbledrams! Doodledums! Nitwitteries!” These are a few of the signature eccentric sayings that Italian novelist and essayist Ginzburg ascribes to members of her family in this unusual portrait of everyday life in Italy from the 1920s to 50s. An experimental novel-cum-memoir first published in 1963, it features her parents, older siblings, in-laws, dissident friends and acquaintances, as well as those known through her mother’s oft-recounted reminiscences, who had “assumed the step of the dead, light and elusive”. Family Lexicon, translated by Jenny McPhee, is published by Daunt. The Guardian.

Going Gaga for Gazoz

If the Israeli gazoz revival could be attributed to a single person, that would be Binyanim (Benny) Briga, the owner of Cafe Levinski 41, a hole-in-the-wall establishment in Tel Aviv’s Florentin neighborhood. Five years ago, Briga, previously a restaurant owner, settled in the tiny location and started offering customers abundant, photogenic gazoz, using entirely house-made ingredients... Se volete leggere la storia del gazoz, cliccate qui. Devo ammettere di aver scelto questo post perché mi piaceva il titolo, ma suppongo che anche la bevanda sia gradevole, perché non aprire un gazoz bar a Milano?

Raccolta di testi ebraici rari arriva alla biblioteca della Brown

The Brown University Library is now home to a collection of rare illustrated texts that depict how Jewish communities have celebrated the Passover Seder across the globe, spanning more than 400 years and in a wide range of languages. 

L'avventurosa (e a lieto fine) storia di un violoncello

Si tratta del violoncello - un Matteo Goffriller - di Matt Haimovitz. La potete leggere sul New Yorker di questa settimana, nella sezione "The Talk of the Town". Ovviamente si svolge a New York.

"He [Haimovitz] had played it for thirty years, until, fifteen months earlier, while giving a lesson to a promising Canadian student, he dropped it, and the cello’s neck snapped. Since then, the instrument had been undergoing extensive repairs by a team of five luthiers at Reed Yeboah Fine Violins, near Columbus Circle. Now the shop had called to say that Matteo was ready for release.

The relationship between cellist and cello is unusually tight. “It’s probably the instrument closest to the human voice in range,” Haimovitz said. He described the necessity of wrapping oneself around the cello while playing. “You have to be good friends, intimate friends.”

Pictures from an Exposition

Pictures from an Exposition: Visualizing the 1893 World's Fair: una bella mostra sulla Worlds Fair del 1893, "Featuring works of art and ephemera from the Newberry’s extensive collection of exposition materials, Pictures from an Exposition explores the fair’s tremendous power of attraction, both at the time of its presentation and through history into the present, for both those who attended and those who experienced it from afar", alla Newberry Library di Chicago dal 28 settembre al 31 dicembre.