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Showing posts with the label Venice

Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

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Some years ago I read Berendt’s book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and I absolutely loved it. Wonderfully written, wonderful out of the ordinary people. When I saw that he followed up this book with a book about Venice,  The City of Fallen Angels , I bought it and it has decorated by TBR shelves ever since. Finally, I grabbed it and started reading. As with his other book you are drawn in to the history of the city. He manages to find all these interesting people that he contacts to get their story. As with the Midnight book, the main story is a legal one. The opera house in Venice burnt down while it was renovated. Now they are searching for the people responsible, either by arson or by accident. This leads us into the thorny area of Italian law, where for a foreigner, once your inside, there seems to be no way out!
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