I read 35 books, or 10726 pages, in 2025. A remarkable step up from the previous year. I have not read so many books since 2015 (36), and I never read so many pages before. Having read a few comic books helps pump up the stats, I reckon, and I suspect switching to ebooks played a role, too, as reading is more accessible than ever.
I bought a first-edition Kindle back in the day, but never got around to using it much. After a few attempts to like it, it ended up in a drawer. Fast forward to 2025, I gave myself a second chance and got a Kobo Clara BW, a device I’m digging a lot. Yes, every time I finish an ebook I liked, I’m sad I cannot shelf it, but the advantages are many that I don’t think I’m going back to paper books anytime soon. There will be exceptions, I’m sure, but the norm will be ebook first.
The usual scoring system applies:
- One star means a book is meh.
- Two stars mean a book is perfectly fine.
- Three stars mean a book is good—consider it recommended.
- Four stars mean a book is exceptional.
- Five stars is pretty much unheard of.
Il mangiatore di pietre, Davide Longo
★★★☆☆
A good, short noir set in the harsh, rugged, and in some ways repellent mountains of Piedmont, on the border with France. The characters are equally tough, children of their land. The writing adapts; less is more.
Across arctic America, Knud Rasmussen
(Il grande viaggio in slitta, Quodlibet)
★★★☆☆
The exceptional account of the sled journey from Greenland to Alaska and on to Siberia. During the sixth Thule expedition, Knud Rasmussen encountered all the Eskimo tribes, documenting them one by one and collecting a huge number of artifacts. This book is a popularized, highly condensed version of Rasmussen’s most ambitious expedition, which was a great success.
Orbit Orbit, Caparezza
★★★★☆
Orbit Orbit marks Caparezza’s debut in comics. He claims that only later did he feel inspired to add a soundtrack that blossomed to become a new album of the same name. While the two works can be enjoyed independently, they form a unique, multi-dimensional work.
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe
★★★★☆
Heartbreaking. I have always wanted to learn more about what happened in Ireland during the Troubles. Not being Irish, I often found the subject daunting. The prose here is perfectly charged with meaning, and the reader is sucked into the narrative vortex from the very first page, with the insane scene of Jean McConville being torn from the arms of her large and loving family—never to return—by masked thugs. What is shocking here is that this is not a novel, but a journalistic investigation. A rich apparatus of notes accompanies every event narrated or quoted.
A Nord di Thule, Knud Rasmussen
★★★★☆
It is 1912, Greenland is still largely unexplored by Europeans, and the Thule trading station has just been inaugurated. It is from there that Knud Rasmussen sets off in April, accompanied by a Danish cartographer and two Inuit hunters, aboard dog sleds, to map Peary’s Channel. This volume is the expedition’s travel diary, and it is as fascinating, harsh, and adventurous as you can imagine. It is excellent, not for its literary value, but for its testimony to a heroic era that has now disappeared. I am, however, biased, as I have been collecting all of Knud Rasmussen’s writings for some time.
Pornorama, Claudia Grande
★★★☆☆
with pornorama, claudia grande has written an ambitious novel that combines the atmospheres of thomas pynchon and chuck palahniuk with true crime, the most unsuspected innocence and the most heinous brutality, private neuroses and great repressions, a red-light photograph of our contemporary world, so obsessed with death that it disguises it with sex and so deformed by money that it no longer recognizes its violence.
ambitious and courageous. it took too long for the story to start ticking.
The Day of Judgment, Salvatore Satta
(Il giorno del giudizio, Adelphi)
★★★★★
Salvatore Satta tells the story of a city (Nuoro) and a rural Sardinian society that is slowly transforming into something new and profoundly different. The protagonists, with their rituals and customs, belong to the past without knowing it. There is sadness and disillusionment in these pages. No matter their social class, a ray of light never touches the protagonists’ lives. Their lives inevitably all end in the cemetery, the only proof of their passage through this world. Compelling and convincing despite the nihilism that permeates this novel, Satta delivers a masterpiece.
Stasiland, Anna Funder
(C’era una volta la Ddr, Feltrinelli)
★★★★★
The East German Stasi was the world’s best and most efficient secret police, the textbook definition of the omnipresent Big Brother. The Stasi guarded and secured the rule of East Germany’s Communist Party for four decades, during which it seeped into every tiny crevice of East German society. East Germans could not escape the Stasi - in every six people, one was an informer for it; all spaces where life took place were infiltrated and monitored by the Stasi, which kept meticulous records on its subjects. Anna Funder does an extraordinary job in interviewing and telling the personal stories of people on both sides of the table: those persecuted by the service, and officials at various levels in the organization and around it, who took an active part in the action. Reading this work right after The Communist Manifesto was enlightening.
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
(Manifesto del partito comunista, Feltrinelli)
★★★★☆
One hundred and seventy years later, the truths contained in the Manifesto remain as relevant as ever. Capital’s ability to control our lives through its untouchable ownership of the means of production remains intact. It is difficult to deny that the struggle for emancipation from precariousness, structural exploitation, and alienation should be led not by those who control work in their own interests, but by those who spend their lives working or trying to do so. I am glad I finally read this document. Each of us should go to back the sources first, then proceed from there.
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
(Il senso di una fine, Einaudi)
★★★★☆
Memory can deceive us, and our actions have consequences that we often cannot predict or fully understand. Barnes brilliantly shows how the protagonist selectively remembers events, usually distorting them in his favor. Self-justification and self-deception characterize Tony’s narrative, as he always tends to present himself in a favorable light, minimizing his flaws and responsibilities. Guilt and responsibility emerge towards the end, when Tony discovers the role he played in his friend’s fate.
History is that version of the past we have chosen to believe.
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
★★★★☆
It’s hard to put this book down. It’s full of stereotypes about the epic history of the West, but then again, it’s not. It would be more accurate to say that it contributes to shaping them, and it does so in a peculiar way, enriching and retouching them in a captivating manner.
Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
★★★☆☆
Science fiction that is both incredible and plausible thanks to the extensive research work done by the author of The Martian. Sometimes perhaps it goes overboard with the details and brilliant hacks of the genius scientist and his pal the engineer, but the story remains gripping until the end. The message is clear: it will be cooperation between peoples and between worlds that saves us, not conflict.
Assalto alle Alpi, Marco A. Ferrari
★★★★☆
To give the Alps a future, a new perspective is necessary—one that is aware and respectful. A threat hangs over the Alps in our near future if we continue to draw upon old idealizing stereotypes that reduce the mountains to a salvific place of pure “beauty,” or to an amusement park for tourists fleeing the cities. How can we imagine their near future? In this small but important book, M.A. Ferrari traces a brief history of the “assault on the Alps”: tourist speculation, the “valorization” of the territory, and everything that has led to the current situation. He then attempts to propose new paths, which are actually already being experimented with in various places.
Lost in Translation, Ottavio Fatica
★★☆☆☆
Started well, got bored relatively soon. The insights are sometimes brilliant.
The Mental Load, A Feminist Comic, by Emma
★★★★☆
A graphic novel that captures the condition of women in Western Europe today in 10 episodes; a read for everyone, a starting point for exploring topics such as women’s mental load and emotional labor. I suspect most readers are women; should be men.
Ragazzo, Zuzu
★★★☆☆
Zuzu recounts youthful angst, the collapse of a family unit, and disorientation through a combination of scenes from everyday life and improbable situations, indulging in explicit yet childlike sexuality, without forgetting to reveal the truth through dreamlike scenes that devour reality to lead to other moments. These are certainly the most powerful moments in the entire work, in terms of intensity and visual anarchy.
History (La Storia), Elsa Morante
★★★★☆
The story of a small, humble, and desperate Roman family forced to face the great historical events of the advent of totalitarianism in Italy and Europe, World War II, and its consequences. One of the best-selling books of all time in Italy, it still sells very well today, and for good reason. It sparked great controversy and envy when it was released, but time has proven it right.
Voices in the Evening (Le voci della sera), Natalia Ginzburg
★★★☆☆
Audiobook. The story of the seemingly dull and claustrophobic life in a small town in the Piedmont province during and after World War II. Charming short work, with some rich and interesting characters.
S., Gipi
★★★☆☆
S. is short for Sergio, the name of the author’s father, who recently passed away. The book is a collection of autobiographical memories and stories set in Tuscany between 1943 and roughly the end of the century. It’s beautiful, but it didn’t engage me as much as I thought it would. I appreciated the fact that it didn’t hide some of the weaknesses of the parental figure.
Le valli della memoria, Pietro Scarnera
★★☆☆☆
A small comic book on the “History of the Liberation of Ravenna,” partly subsidized by the Municipality of Ravenna and published by Coconino (a prominent Italian comic book publisher). The idea of involving the young grandchildren of the protagonists of that era in a dreamlike way is interesting because, in the end, the message is always the same: don’t forget and treasure the lessons of history so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.
La mia vita disegnata male, Gipi
★★★★☆
It is a journey back in time to rediscover the author’s own life, but also an evolution in comic book representation, moving towards a more simplified style. The essential, shaky, almost childish lines correspond, from a psychological point of view to the loss of references, the display of the author’s problems and his vision of the world. Gipi has a taste for jokes; he plays down and demystifies humbly and entertainingly. It’s just a life lived (very) badly, like so many others. But the “poorly drawn” cartoons are interspersed with “well-drawn” ones, almost as if the author wanted to show us that, if he wanted to, he is an artist with excellent technical skill. All in all, between dreams, nightmares, irony, melancholy, and reality, the book stimulates reflection on what life is, how to face it, and how to deal with one’s feelings of guilt.
La grande rimozione, Roberto Grossi
★★★★☆
It is an essential comic book that effectively presents the situation of climate change, its urgency, and how to become aware of it and act collectively and individually before it is too late. Some of the panels, often compositions that compare two similar yet opposite situations, are brilliant and very effective. I hope it will be translated and receive the broadest possible distribution. I learned about this book thanks to the Coconino Festival held in my hometown this weekend. A small but well-executed exhibition was dedicated to this work.
A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again, David Foster Wallace
★★★☆☆
(Tennis, tv, trigonometria, tornado e altre cose divertenti che non farò mai più, Minimum fax)
Three stories stand out: DFW’s youth tennis, his visit to the Illinois State Fair, and his account of his experience following David Lynch as a director. The one about American TV started well but quickly became too US-centric to follow. DFW, however, is always a joy to read.
The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales, Oliver Sacks
★★★☆☆
(L’uomo che scambio sua moglie per un cappello, Adelphi)
Quoting a comment on Goodreads, to which I have nothing to add: “This book has many fascinating studies of neurological disorders, and the stories behind the patients are easily understood and, in many cases, enthralling. However, Dr. Sacks seems to give his readers too much credit when he throws off “hyperagnosia”, “Korsokovian”, and “meningioma” like he assumes we had read an entire neurology textbook before picking this one up.”
Source code, by Bill Gates
★★★★☆
Autobiography of Bill Gates from early childhood to the early steps of Microsoft. An interesting work for many reasons, not the least of which is that I find myself in many of the traits and passions of young Gates, on an almost disturbing level. One of the main characters recounts a key moment: the advent of micro and personal computers, and how they changed everything.
Papyrus, by Irene Vallejo
★★★★☆
Papyrus by Irene Vallejo (originally titled “El infinito en un junco” in Spanish) is a fascinating work about the history of books in antiquity. I think Vallejo did an excellent job telling the history of writing and books in an accessible yet scholarly way. Her ability to weave historical facts with interesting anecdotes makes the text engaging. As I understand, the autobiographical digressions that sometimes can annoy the reader are characteristic of her style - she uses her personal experience as a bridge to connect modern readers with the ancient world. The book is particularly strong when describing how texts survived through centuries thanks to dedicated copyists, libraries like Alexandria, and the transition from papyrus scrolls to codices (the ancestors of modern books).
Libera Università, by Tomaso Montanari
★★★★☆
Tomaso Montanari is a lucid and sharp thinker; this text proves it. By the author’s admission, this is a militant, non-technical work. No solutions are offered to the many problems of Italian universities; that is not the goal (albeit one of his own texts on the subject would be interesting). The importance of a clear separation between the tertiary education system and executive power is emphasized more than ever in a season such as the current one, dominated by parties that hark back to totalitarian ideologies. I found the chapter about Italian telematic universities and how they’re encouraged and leveraged by at least parts of the executive power fascinating.
Cambiare la storia, by Adriano Prosperi
★★★★☆
Is human history editable? One way people have tried to change the historical course of humanity is by fabricating fakes. There is no shortage of examples; in this book, Adriano Prosperi focuses on a few in particular—the Donation of Constantine, perhaps the most famous among historical fakes. The second case concerns the historical inventions of the visionary Annio da Viterbo, who rewrote world history, starting with the Flood and prophesying the place and date of the apocalypse. One finds its model in the false chronicles and fake archaeological finds of seventeenth-century Granada, where moriscos threatened with expulsion from Spain invented the existence of a very ancient presence of Christian Arabs who came to Spain before St. James. But the most disturbing of the examples is the fourth, that of the “Protocols of the Elder Saviors of Zion,” notoriously false yet still widespread and operating. Changing or negating history does not pertain to the modern day; it has always been part of the process.
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, by Ben Montgomery
★★★☆☆
(La signora degli Appalachi, Terre di mezzo)
“Grandma Gatewood’s Walk” by Ben Montgomery tells the remarkable true story of Emma Gatewood, who, at age 67, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail solo in 1955. After enduring decades of domestic abuse and raising 11 children, Emma left home with minimal supplies—wearing Keds sneakers and carrying only a tiny denim bag with necessities. She told her family she was “going for a walk” without revealing her ambitious 2,050-mile journey from Georgia to Maine. The book weaves Emma’s extraordinary hike together with her complicated personal history, highlighting her physical resilience and mental determination. Montgomery reveals how her journey captured America’s imagination, bringing significant publicity to the then-obscure Appalachian Trail. Emma’s accomplishments established her as a pioneering figure in hiking and inspired generations of hikers, particularly women. The book portrays her as a hiking legend and a symbol of perseverance who found freedom and purpose in nature after a life of hardship.
Emma Gatewood was genuinely revolutionary in what we now recognize as ultralight hiking philosophy decades before it became a formal movement. While experienced hikers of her era typically carried 30+ pounds of gear, Emma completed the entire Appalachian Trail with a homemade denim bag containing minimal essentials—a change of clothes, a shower curtain for shelter, some food, and little else. Her choice to wear simple Keds sneakers instead of heavy hiking boots was remarkably ahead of her time. What makes her achievement even more extraordinary is the context—she had no GPS, no specialized lightweight equipment, no online trail forums, and minimal trail markings compared to today. The Appalachian Trail was rougher and less developed in 1955, with fewer shelters and support infrastructure. Her approach embodied the core ultralight philosophy: bring only what you need, rely on your knowledge and adaptability rather than gear, and understand that mental fortitude often matters more than equipment. Emma proved that age, gender, and expensive gear were not prerequisites for tackling ambitious wilderness challenges.
The death of Ivan Ilyc, by Lev Tolstoy
★★★★☆
(La morte di Ivan Ilyc, Feltrinelli)
This work is a potent warning against the superficiality of life and a call to seek a more authentic and conscious existence. The main themes (and there are many for a booklet of a few pages, but that is what can be achieved by a giant of literature) are the inevitability of death, the hypocrisy of “civilized” society, alienation and loneliness, the meaning of life, and redemption through suffering. It is one of Tolstoy’s minor works, the philosophical-religious period from his second and last periods. Admirable.
La scomparsa di Majorana, by Leonardo Sascia
★★★☆☆
Since March 26, 1938, traces have been lost, between his departure and arrival on a sea voyage from Palermo to Naples, of the 31-year-old Sicilian physicist Ettore Majorana, whom Fermi would not hesitate to call a genius of the stature of Galileo and Newton. Suicide, as the investigators of the time want to believe and let belief, or voluntary escape from the world and the terrible fates that such a mind may have read into the future and the near future of science? In this admittedly speculative work, Sascia favours the latter. Sciascia’s arguments are intriguing but not entirely convincing to me. The value of this work lies in Majorana’s biography, which is well-documented and told. One is left wondering what Majorana could have achieved in his career if he hadn’t fled from it.
The Moon and the Bonfires, by Cesare Pavese
★★★★☆
(La Luna e i Falò, Edimedia)
The Moon and the Bonfires by Cesare Pavese is a novel published in 1950 and is considered his masterpiece. The book explores several key themes, including:
- Return and Memory: The protagonist, Anguilla, returns to his hometown in the Langhe after years of absence. The contrast between past and present becomes a central element of the narrative.
- Identity and Sense of Belonging: As an orphan who sought fortune in America, Anguilla questions his roots and whether he truly belongs anywhere.
- War and Its Consequences: In the aftermath of World War II, the novel highlights the scars left by the conflict, mainly focusing on the Italian Resistance and its impact on people and the land.
- Myth and Disillusionment: The moon and the bonfires symbolically represent the contrast between dreams and reality, between the desire for something more significant and the harsh truth of rural life.
- The Human Condition and the Inescapability of Fate – Pavese explores themes of solitude and the search for meaning, often portraying life with a melancholic and fatalistic outlook.
The novel is intensely autobiographical and reflects Pavese’s existential concerns, offering a universal meditation on memory, identity, and the pain of existence.
This village where I was born, I believed for a long time to be the whole world. Now that I have indeed seen the world and know that it is made up of many small villages, I’m not sure if, as a boy, I was really that wrong.
Mornings in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa
★★★☆☆
(Ogni mattina a Jenin, Feltrinelli)
I received this novel as a Christmas present from my kids, and I’m grateful to them for this powerful, passionate, eye-opening novel. Set against one of the twentieth century’s most intractable political conflicts, Mornings in Jenin is a deeply human novel of history, identity, friendship, love, terrorism, surrender, courage, and hope. Its power forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining conflicts of our lifetimes.
For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed.
The heartbeat of the wild, by David Quammen
★★★☆☆
(Il cuore selvaggio della natura, Adelphi)
An annotated collection of memorable field reports written for National Geographic over nearly three decades by David Quemmen.
Human beings are the problem on this planet, but they are also the solution.