Rainy Day Reads

I read this as my “Modern Translated Fiction” entry for my bingo reading challenge this year, because I’ve heard so many good things about it.   The book is the first in a series called “The Neapolitan Novels” and it details the childhood and early adolescent of a young girl in 1950s Naples, Italy. I have the feeling that this book is supposed to be autobiographical, but I can’t say if that is true or not. It is told in the first person, so that certainly lends the story the feeling of autobiography.  The story starts with two young girls, the narrator Elena and Lila, becoming friends. We follow their life in a poor neighborhood in the city and their struggles to follow their dreams. The girls both have ambitions to do well in school and bring their families out of poverty one way or another. While Elena manages to fight her way through school, Lila has to leave school to help her family make money. We then follow the girls as they grow into teenagers and as th...

Spoiler: I may have gone overboard…. I went to the library a few days ago and decided to really browse the shelves and pick up a good selection. And I feel like I succeeded… I picked up both fiction and non-fiction to give myself a wide selection to choose from.  Let’s start with non-fiction.  I picked up a couple of books on ways to go more green. “1001 Ways You Can Save the Planet” by Joanna Yarrow and “Green Makeover” by Maria Cuculiza. I have actually read “Green Makeover” before a number of years ago, but I just remember thinking it all seemed a bit of a hassle and I was too lazy to really implement any of the ideas given in this book. But as I have aged I have become more invested in living a less wasteful life and more dedicated to the environment and sustainability. I am still lazy, but I hope to find a few ways to clean up my act in these two books.  Then I picked up “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer because I’ve h...