Italian Reading List
Over the past few months, I’ve done a lot of reading in both English and Italian, taking note of excerpts from experts like Natalia Ginsburg and contemporary writers like Francesco Dimitri. In all of my reading, I’ve found books to be the best way to travel.
Below, you’ll find my Italian reading list as well as a compilation of story fragments that resonated. Glimpses I want to hold onto. Some are lines with significant meaning, while others simply make me want to write.
Reading List, Novels:
Family Lexicon, Natalia Ginsberg
Happiness as Such, Natalia Ginsberg
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
The Inspector Montalbano series, Andrea Camilleri
The Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim
Love & Gelato, Jenna Evans Welch
Reading List, Short Stories:
The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories
The Wine-Dark Sea, Leonardo Sciascia
Reading List, Poetry:
Disaffections, Cesare Pavesi
Reading List, Non-Fiction:
On Persephone’s Island, Mary Taylor Simetti
Sicily, John Julius Norwich
In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri
Lyrical Prose:
“But after a certain point in life a person has to dunk her regrets in the morning coffee, just like biscuits” - Natalia Ginsburg, Happiness, As Such
"It was really true, there was no longer anything about him that could interest me. He wasn’t even a fragment of the past, he was only a stain, like the print of a hand left years ago on a wall.” - Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment
“During the day, on the other hand, I was frantic, and became more and more careless. I imposed on myself tasks to accomplish, I rushed from one end of the city to the other on errands that were not at all urgent but which I tackled with the energy of emergency. I wanted my movements to seem purposeful, and instead I scarcely had control over my body; behind that activity I lived like a sleepwalker.” - Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment
Italian Writers on Writing:
“…someone who has the luck to be born a living character can laugh at death. They will never die. The author, the creator, will die but never the character.” - Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters Looking for an Author
“It’s words - that’s where all the trouble lies. Everyone has their own special world inside of them, their own way of seeing the world. How then can we understand each other when the words that I use to speak are full of my meaning of the world and the person who is listening to me, inevitably, has their own world inside of them, attaches their own meaning to my words. We think we understand each other - we don’t really.” - Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters Looking for an Author
“We are many people. We’re one ay with somebody, an entirely different way for somebody else. Yet we go on believing, in everything we do, that we are just being ourselves, the same person we always are It is not true! And when we are caught in a certain act, when others insist on seeing us in just one light we begin to realize how unjust it is. Our whole existence cannot be summed up because of something that took place once.” - Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters Looking for an Author
“And when those characters are alive, when they live in front of their author, his only job is to follow their lead, take the words and actions they suggest to him. If he doesn’t he’s in trouble. When a character is born, immediately they become totally independent, even from their own author and people begin to imagine them in a whole host of situations totally different from our original one…Our author has abdoned us alive - but without life. We have every right to do what we are doing.” - Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters Looking for an Author
“I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t….True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known; they are the very small miracles of the secret spirits of the home or the great miracles that leave us truly astonished. I still have this childish wish for marvels, large of small, I still believe in them.” - Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia
“Writers and journalists are parasites who survive by feeding off misfortune, their own and others. Which is why for this class of people the entire island serves as an inexhaustible source of stories and inspiration. Nowhere in the world is there soil that offers, in such a concentration, so broad a sampling of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, Mafia, unemployment, illegal immigrants, drought, floods…”- Roberto Alajamo, Palermo
“Creative people do not pass moral judgments - at least not at once - on what meets their eye…art essentially has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing” - Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction
On the Italian Landscape:
“Turin seemed to me a great fortress with iron walls, walls of a frozen gray that the spring sun could not warm” - Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment
“So we spoke about eternal Sicily, the Sicily of the natural world; about the scent of rosemary on the Nebrodi Mountains and the taste of Melilli honey; about the swaying cornfields seen from Etna on a windy day in May, some secluded spots near Syracuse, and the fragrant gusts from the citrus plantations known to sweep down on Palermo during sunset in June. We spoke of those magic summer nights, looking out over the gulf of Castellamare, when the stars are mirrored in the sleeping sea, and how, lying on your back among the mastic trees, your spirit is lost in the whirling heavens, while the body braces itself, fearing the approach of demons” - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, “The Siren”
“When you die here, you die as lavishly as you can, so as to give the townsfolk one last chance to speak nicely about you” - Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things
On Italian Culture:
“One of the most common mistakes made by foreigners who arrive in Italy, convinced they are among carefree, genial Latins, is to go around saying ‘Ciao’ to everyone. But Ciao is the equivalent of ‘Hi’ in English, and while in America you might be able to say ‘Hi’ to someone you do not know well, in Italy you do not.” - John Hooper, The Italians
“‘One shouldn’t talk all the time about eating! It’s vulgar!’” - Natalia Ginsburg, Family Lexicon