Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar

Yourcenar’s academic research in her early 20s led to the writing of one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. Mine led to a Ph.D. thesis that brilliantly passed, but that even I wouldn’t want to re-read. Something went wrong somewhere.

I have never been a fan of Roman history, with my hatred for Latin and all that, but reading of this time between paganism and Christianity when man stood alone and at the centre of everything was a breathtaking experience for me. Of all the books I’ve ever read about the antiquity, I always laughed at how staged and implausible the prose and the dialogues looked, but it’s not the case here – where there is no dialogue and the prose is lyric but flawless.

And reading through Yourcenar’s notes in the appendix made me jealous of her passion for her research, something that I am not quite sure I’ve ever had.

Il Deserto dei Tartari – Dino Buzzati

On a bizarre camper holiday, my then-10 year old cousin (a really avid reader, at least back then) ran out of books and borrowed this from his rather surprised mom. He found it really, really sad. I don’t think my comments can be any more insightful, although I seriously don’t think I would have been able to read this classic of Italian literature when I was 10, I was sufficiently emotionally drained when I read it as a 25-year old.

The book is about a soldier’s wait for a long-promised attack to his fortress by the Tartars. Except that the attack never comes. And he waits. And the reader waits with him. I am often surprised by how great writers can draw up masterpieces from simple stories in which little happens, but Il Deserto dei Tartari takes this to an entirely new level – 80% of the book is just about the desolating wait of the main character, Drogo, and yet it keeps the reader’s interest very much alive.

And forget about Drogo’s final deep thoughts, I wanted him to fight the Tartars – winning or losing didn’t matter much, I wanted him to fight, and I am a relatively committed pacifist...