Divorare il Cielo - Paolo Giordano

 

I got this book as I had (surprisingly) loved Tasmania last year and, after all, Paolo Giordano had written one of the biggest Italian editorial successes of the 21st century. 

Instead, with Divorare il Cielo we have a very early, but very serious, contender for "worst book I've read in 2025". 

The plot is poor and jumps the shark about 25 times. The characters are either unbearable, unbelievable, or underdeveloped (in particular every woman other than the narrator), but preferably all three. Somehow, the book also made me sincerely uninterested in Apulia, which is now widely considered one of the coolest regions of Italy. 

It really felt like Giordano was trying to present himself as the Italian Franzen here, but fell way short in all things that make Franzen great, and just went way more wrong in all the things that at times make me question Franzen's actual greatness...

Freedom – Jonathan Franzen

One of those books that have been with me for quite some time – to be precise since June 2011, when a student living in my dorm left it behind.

Much like with The Corrections, Franzen does life in Minnesota (in particular the life of frantic women in Minnesota) oh so very well. The problem for me, however, is that I somewhat feel like he doesn’t do life in NY for a cool musician or life in DC for an environmentalist nearly as well.

The chapters authored by Patty are wonderful, the others slightly less so. But going back to Minnesota, the clash between most of the locals and the Berglunds reminded me of the Brexit debates that we are seeing pretty much all over England right now (except in London, because, you know, people kind of like us continentals over here!).

Maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed reading about Patty so much had she not been a basketball player, but the hypothermia trick is pure genius and is something that I should definitely try out if I ever screw up quite badly with my adored wife.