false 331254 0 0 2871397 1590172892 9781590172896 31 <![CDATA[Pinocchio]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/books/28/397/2871397-m-1255601567.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/books/28/397/2871397-s-1255601567.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2871397.Pinocchio 3.64 73 Pinocchio at the same time remains unknown–certainly in America, where it is linked in many minds to the Walt Disney movie that bears little relation to Carlo Collodi’s splendid original. That story–improvised on a weekly basis over the course of two years for publication in a newspaper–is about, of course, a puppet who succeeds after many trials and tribulations in becoming a “real” boy, and is hardly the sentimental and morally improving tale it has been taken for. To the contrary, Pinocchio is one of the great subversives of the written page (you might compare him to his close contemporary Huck Finn), a madcap genius, hurtled along at the pleasure and mercy of his desires. It is his unabashedness, his unwillingness to give up on anything he wants, that drives him on and delights us. And Pinocchio the book, like Pinocchio the character, is one of the great inventions of world literature, a sublime anomaly, merging the traditions of the picaresque, of the commedia dell’arte, and of the fairy tale into a singular book that is at once adventure, comedy, and irreducible conundrum, one that anticipates the surrealism and magical realism that when it was written still lay far in the future. Thronged with memorable characters–the Blue Fairy, the Fox and the Dog, and Fire Eater–and composed with the fluid but inevitable logic of a dream, Pinocchio is a masterpiece of satire, fantasy, and sheer wonder that is endlessly absorbing, amusing, and surprising: essential equipment for life. 

In this new translation by Geoffrey Brock, the prizewinning translator of Cesare Pavese and Umberto Eco, Pinocchio finally has an English rendering worthy of the inspired original.]]> 15123 3.58 1471 181 331254 3.28 1614 261 1882 10503 0156030438 9780156030434 194 <![CDATA[The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166253875m/10503.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166253875s/10503.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10503.The_Mysterious_Flame_of_Queen_Loana 3.27 1403 The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, may strike some readers as laughably unpromising, and others as breathtakingly rich. A sixty-ish Milanese antiquarian bookseller nicknamed Yambo suffers a stroke and loses his memory of everything but the words he has read: poems, scenes from novels, miscellaneous quotations. His wife Paola fills in the bare essentials of his family history, but in order to trigger original memories, Yambo retreats alone to his ancestral home at Solara, a large country house with an improbably intact collection of family papers, books, gramophone records, and photographs. The house is a museum of Yambo's childhood, conventiently empty of people, except of course for one old family servant with a long memory--an apt metaphor for the mind. Yambo submerges himself in these artifacts, rereading almost everything he read as a school boy, blazing a meandering, sometimes misguided, often enchanting trail of words. Flares of recognition do come, like "mysterious flames," but these only signal that Yambo remembers something; they do not return that memory to him. It is like being handed a wrapped package, the contents of which he can only guess.

Within the limitations of Yambo's handicap and quest, Eco creates wondrous variety, wringing surprise and delight from such shamelessly hackneyed plot twists as the discovery of a hidden room. Illustrated with the cartoons, sheet music covers, and book jackets that Yambo uncovers in his search, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana can be read as a love letter to literature, a layered excavation of an Italian boyhood of the 1940s, and a sly meditation on human consciousness. Both playful and reverent, it stands with The Name of the Rose and The Island of the Day Before as among Eco's most successful novels. --Regina Marler

]]> 1730 3.86 30507 2697 331254 3.28 1614 261 2004 1527306 1566636671 9781566636674 2 <![CDATA[Weighing Light: Poems]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184762176m/1527306.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184762176s/1527306.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1527306.Weighing_Light_Poems 4.00 7 331254 3.28 1614 261 2005 6377301 1843546736 9781843546733 1 <![CDATA[Skylark Farm: A Novel]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6377301-skylark-farm 4.67 3 <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="cc6600">About the Author ~ Antonia Arslan
Antonia Arslan lives in Padua, Italy. She has a degree in archaeology and was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Padua. <link2><url type="asin" value="1843546736"/><link2-body>Skylark Farm</link2-body></link2> is her first novel.</p> <p clear="all"> <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="cc6600">Reviews for Skylark Farm. A Novel

Check out a selection of reviews below.

Arslan’s novel raises compelling questions about the traumatic historical events that shaped our inherited identity. The Independent

Epic in sweep and heartbreaking tone, Skylark Farm is billed as a novel transformed from the ‘obscure memories’ that are Aslan’s heritage. Sunday Telegraph

Masterly… gripping. Financial Times

Skylark Farm finds the goodness in humanity during its blackest episodes. Psychologies

An Armenian Schindler's List. Kirkus

This soul-shaking novel feels like a masterpiece. Booklist

Arslan delivers vivid, powerful testimony of horrific cruelty and immeasurable loss. Publishers Weekly

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