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I re-read Bolaño's The Savage Detectives during my holiday and it still one hell of a ride. You may get lost in the longer middle section, but damn, it feels good to get lost in these pages.

^ Great. It is a classic and we own a nice edition.

Later try to catch Tarkovsky's movie with the same name, not Soderbergh in this case. ;) Though Tarkovsky's movie is more philosophical than science fiction.

^ I like the Soderbergh's version a lot (but I know I am in minority on this), and I remember very little of the Tarkovksy's one. When I am done with the book I'll watch both.

"The Morning Star", by Karl Ove Knausgård. Probably a lot darker than I perceived it?

https://themorningstar.no/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/573 ... rning-star

^ Splendid book, even better than The Corrections. Now I am on M. Il figlio del secolo by Antonio Scurati, which was a big hit in Italy when it came out in 2018 and is going to be translated. It's historical fiction, basically Scurati uses real facts and documents to tell the rise and fall of Benito Mussolini.

About to start the third and last book of Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It's only fair to say I've never read anything like this and I'll probably never will. It's also fair to say this poem would come with me on that famous desert island.

About to start these two:

^ Avoid the first one. I am not yet onto the second one because Alessandro Manzoni got in between.

^^ Didn't particularly enjoy the second one either. So I moved to this one instead:

I don't know. If you're looking for something easy and entertaining this is a decent thriller. But the writing style is not really my cup of tea.

This, however, is a masterpiece.

My edition has a different cover because I found a used copy published by Virago Press in 2003. Coming from the study of memory in St. Augustine, this is somehow fitting.

Now I don't know if and when this will be translated in English but it is by far the best book on Michael Mann and his cinema. And I am not just saying this because my favourite Italian film critic wrote it.

M. L'uomo della provvidenza
Second chapter in Scurati's trilogy on Mussolini. As good as the first one so far.

^ Not as good as the first one eventually. I have ditched a couple of books after 40/50 pages (one from Mario Rigoni Stern and one from Graham Norton) and I moved to On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

^ That Schopenhauer book is incredibly funny. Every other page he insults Hegel and Schelling in creative ways, not to mention German philosophy and university in general. Now, I have nothing against Hegel and Schelling, but Schopenhauer goes so hard on them it's actually impossible to avoid considering their works under a different light.

Beside that, the book is incredible on its own and mandatory reading if one wants to approach other Schopenhauer's works.

My favourite reads of 2021: https://www.manueluberti.eu/books/2021/12/24/books/

Out of more than 50 books, these are the true beauties.

Many thanks for this brilliant write up, you should probably review books for a living!

^ I wish I could :)