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The Library Is Open

A blog about books and writing, through rainbow-tinted glasses. Every book gets a gay rating.

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Tag: Italy

Review: Water Music by Christine Balint

A delicate novella about the production of art.

Australian, Female writers, Fiction, Historical, Italy, Music, Novella, Venice

Review: A Room With A View by E. M. Forster

A classic novel of travel and Romance.

Classics, England, Italy, Novel

Review: Sex And Vanity by Kevin Kwan

A fizzy adaptation of E. M. Forster’s A Room With A View.

Contemporary, Fiction, Italy, New York, Novel, Racism, Romance

Review: The Story Of A New Name by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)

This second instalment of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet deepens and complicates the themes of the first.

Classics, Fiction, Italy, Novel

Review: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

A potent depiction of friendship.

Contemporary, Fiction, Italy, Novel

Review: The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

An ambitious novel about war and memory.

1930s, Ethiopia, Fiction, Historical, Italy, Novel, War

Review: The Portrait Of A Lady by Henry James

A novel that does what it says, painting a portrait of an ambitious and charming young woman as she seeks to experience all life has to offer.

America, Classics, England, Henry James, Italy

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The early 20th Century German biologist Jacob von Uexküll conceived of an animal’s sensory world as its Umwelt. To try to understand an animal’s Umwelt would be like travelling, he said. Ed Yong vividly conjures these other worlds in this majestic and intimate travelogue of animals’ interior worlds.
White Noise is Don DeLillo’s version of the US suburban parody-horror, like Edward Scissorhands or Stranger Things or Desperate Housewives. It follows Jack Gladney, a professor and inventor of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college, and his family as they try to extract meaning out of their lives. It’s very droll and often amusing — I particularly enjoyed the parody of post-modernist, post-structuralist disciplines, but also that DeLillo seems to yearn for the meaning these studies invest in things.
I screamed, cackled and winced my way through this delicious collection of short stories.
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