One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez

I read this book when I was 16, on a school trip in which I was trying to get my mind off of the girl who was destroying my heart (or maybe I was doing it to prove to her how much of an intellectual I was – either way, it didn’t work).

To this day, there are still so many passages that I quote time and again: the discovery of ice, Remedios ascending to heaven, Mauricio Babilonia’s butterflies, the seventeen Aurelianos, everything around Melquiades, José Arcadio’s chestnut tree, and countless others.

And still this isn’t a book that I would like to re-read. I’m not sure if it’s just me or magical realism is generally out-grown by the time one turns 25. It’s one of my favourite books, yet I’m afraid that revisiting it might destroy my memories of it.

L’Amore a Londra e in altri Luoghi – Flavio Soriga

Another book whose author I decided to contact, and this time not for a telling off. Clearly, after 6 years I don’t remember anything about the short stories, but I remember that they were a pleasant break from my history books during a flight between Turin and London, and that the main character of one of the stories lived in Rosebery Avenue in London, something which I took as a sign. I’m not quite sure of what.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – David H. Lawrence

Back in the day, my granduncle hid my grandma’s copy of the book on top of their kitchen cupboard (and cheekily ended up reading it). At that time the book was hot stuff. Nowadays, its erotic tones no longer causing uproar, the book is just quite boring.

I don’t really care about Lady Chatterley’s love for her gamekeeper – not from a psychological, and even less from a physical and erotic point of view. And I’m tired of inter-class forbidden loves where the poor always ends up being the charmingly mysterious figure who ends up being manipulated (happily or unhappily) by his or more often her partner.

And I’ve got nothing left to say about this book, something which, incidentally, says a lot...

Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides

To all those who are quick to judge what male and female boundaries are and what gender roles have to be (no conditionals, clearly) : I so wish I could force you to read this book.

There is just so much in this novel: history (a great portrayal of the conflict between Turks and Greeks, but also of hippie culture in San Francisco), identity, race, growing-up and, clearly, gender. I loved reading, for once, a book with remarkably lofty ambitions that doesn’t just manage to fulfil those, but remains readable in the process.

Eugenides manages to write about this journey of self-discovery with delicate irony even in its most delicate pages.

And then why haven’t I read Eugenides’s two other novels? I have no idea...

The Emperor’s Tomb – Joseph Roth

I read this book without having first read Radetzky March, something which I now regret (slightly) but that still didn’t prevent me from loving this novel. And I didn’t just love it, I also used it in an essay about the relationship between architecture and memory that won the praise of my Cambridge professors (probably the only time that happened).

There is something in the classy decadence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is particularly appealing to me (and I don’t even come from the part of Italy that was under Austrian control for a long time). I’m not particularly at ease with the way in which Trotta treats his wife, but that probably (and sadly) is justified by his upbringing.

Oddly enough, this is another book whose details are now escaping me, but the final walk to Franz Joseph’s crypt is a wonderfully melancholic picture that I think will always stay with me.

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

I read this book while playing spot the difference between the novel and Apocalypse Now. That was fun. I had already realized that Conrad’s writing is not dated, but this book confirmed it. True, there are passages that are fairly dull, mostly in the lead-up to the actual expedition up the Congo, but this is understandable if not expectable.

The novel is still unsettling, probably like Conrad’s life must have been. The fact that the boat is floating up the Congo and not the Nung to me makes it even more obscure and mysterious. However, I wish I had the liberty of picturing Kurtz and Marlow without the faces of Brando and Sheen.

Also, it’s kind of a shame that there is no talk of surfing in the book, but hey, you can’t have everything...