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Bella lettura, la storia è quella tragicomica di un paese (nel senso di nazione) che si trova di punto in bianco a gestire la situazione straordinaria per cui nessuno muore più. Ci si accorge così di come il nostro sistema sociale ed economico, nonché religioso, sia basato sul fatto imprescindibile secondo cui si muore! La storia poi si sviluppa in un suo percorso. Il testo è interessante anche dal punto di vista stilistico: Saramago scrive i dialoghi come un flusso unico a scarso utilizzo di punteggiatura; anche i periodi non dialogici sono generalmente lunghi e intesi come un quasi flusso di coscienza.

Delightful book. You travel with Bryson around Europe, from the north to the south, the west to the east, mostly touching cities. You experience food, people, history and cultural elements and you overall have good fun, the book it hilarious! Really recommended read for anyone who likes travel literature.

Easy read, I've enjoyed it mostly because of the setting (London, the '20s, jazz) and the language (I certainly learned a lot of words that looked like britishisms and now outdated jargon, though not being a native speaker I cannot attest to these statements), but the plot is very predictable and easy, to the point of being naive for a crime novel. However, worth the read if you like a nice story set in the past. Credit goes to the author for bringing you (quite literally) around London with the characters, describing roads and places.

Wonderful read! The book is faithful to the real history, so I've learned how lobotomy arose from brain research to become a perfect case of bad science (no proper safety testing, no follow-up protocol with patients, lots of ego and fame-chasing from some practitioners of the time). Fascinating and tragic tale, and the book, despite being rooted in fiction, tells it correctly and with a delicate touch. I've only found the ending a bit rushed, some points about what happens to the main characters remain ambiguous.

It is a light read, so take it as such. I found it quite superficial and not particularly entertaining either, but I did read it all - and I didn't have higher expectations so I was fine with it. The part about Italy especially (note: I'm Italian) is full of stereotypes and crass generalisations that the author would be forgiven to apply if she wasn't a regular traveller and writer by profession, so on that I'd expected a bit more.

It is always entertaining to read how people of the past have characterised travel in their days. I didn't know Dickens had written a travelogue, so I jumped on the occasion to read it soon as I learned about it.
The great Victorian writer goes around Italy for a year, briefly passing through France, travelling in his carriage with the family and puts down an almost-stream-of-consciousness account of how he perceives places - at traits, he even writes about ghastly dreams!
The perspective is, I found, a bit snob(ish) at times: there's lot of things he doesn't like and he's constantly picking on the poverty, the dirt, the unglamorous expressions of life he sees. However, he manifests great appreciation of the beauty of landscapes and man-made artefacts, so the sentiment is quite balanced between dislike and love. Fun and interesting book to read now.

I come from exactly the places narrated in this novel so it has been really a beautiful experience to read about them (and learn more of their history) from an english-language book. It is fiction, but the author has performed their research quite well and the book furnishes a good depiction (as far as I can tell at least) of life at the time of the Romans in the South of Italy, in the area between Pompeii and Misenum. This latter place (and this is where I'm from) hosted the end point of one of the greatest marvels of engineering ever built: an aqueduct that used to feed several Roman towns along its route - you can still visit it by the way. Despite what one might think, the story rotates around water and its use. Nice novel.

The edition I had (first one I think) was weirdly peppered with some typos. All in all a great read, I've particularly enjoyed it because it is largely set in places I'm from (an inexistent but highly similar to real towns in the South of Italy, near Naples).
A psychological thriller immersed in beautiful, coloured and full of life landscapes, under the sun of course. It also gives you an interesting overview of Italy during the '50s, when after the war Americans coming to the country for leisure or business were largely regarded as very appreciated guests.
Unlike most cases, I thought the movie is as good as the book.

Informative book, it gives a bird's eye overview of the current applications and potential of the use of AI in medicine and how it can be successfully employed to aid human experience and judgement. The book walks through use cases and real events while setting the ground for a future expansion of the field. It is a very useful read not only for those interested in AI in general but also for everyone who wants to learn more about where part of the progress in the medicine and life sciences fields is heading.