Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site
Main
Page This family-friendly site celebrates Italian culture for the enjoyment of children and
adults. Site-Overview
My Two New Italophile Sites
Italophile Book Reviews offers personal views on many books that
might interest lovers of Italy. Authors and Publishers: I
review books set in Italy, or about Italy and Italian culture, or about
hyphenated Italian culture. My site is family-friendly. Indie (Self)
published books, and small publishing houses are welcome. Contact:
info @ italophiles.com Italophile Books is
an Amazon.com linked shop that has only products Italophiles are sure to
love. Shop with no distractions! You can click through to
the full Amazon.com site at any time, keeping your shopping cart.
Checkout is through Amazon.com's usual secure system. Italian
classics on-line to read or download this link is to all the
books they have in Italian And also from the Biblioteca
dei Classici Italiani Internet Book
Store Italia's top 100 Bestselling Books in Italy List Click here
or on the image above to go to my page about
Boccaccio and his famous 'Decameron'. Click here
or on the image above to go to my page about
Machiavelli and his work as a political scientist and historian. If philosophy is
more your style, try my page about Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius
and his Meditations. Click here
or on the image above to go to my page about
Petrarch and his sonnets to Laura. E. M. Forster's novella 'A Room With a View' was the basis
for a wonderful film, an Italophile favorite, of the same name.
Click on the image from the film above, or here,
to read the novella on-line on my site, or to download a free e-book
version, and to see lots of wonderful rooms with views! The perfect companions of a book... Click on the image above
to visit the Internet Bookstore Italia's top 20 list of books sold in
Italy each week. You can then click on a book to read more about
it, in Italian. Click here
or on the book image above to read about the top writers in Italy today. Dante Alighieri with his Divine Comedy. Dante from the Nicolino Edition 1564 Click here,
or on the image of Mercedes Chiti above, to read some of her award-winning modern
Italian poetry, with English translations.
For fans of Indie E-books
Enter keywords in the
Smashwords
search bar, followed by a comma (for example: mystery, ancient rome,
fiction,) to locate the books that interest you. The books are
available in various e-book formats for immediate download. And
there are over 30,000 free e-books!
Short Stories - Dual Language Books A well-bred Italian
woman explained to me once that Italians were horrified when Encyclopedia
Britannica came out with their first version in Italian. There
were no entries for many of the classic Italian writers such as
Sciascia, Foscolo, or Svevo! Actually, I'd never heard of them before that moment, but I did not
want to upset the woman any further, so I nodded in silent agreement
that the English were arrogant and stupid about great literature. The Britannica quickly corrected their mistake, and I quickly
read up on Italian literature. If you want to read up on Italian
literature, click here
or on the librarian with the book cart, to the right, to access the Voice
of the Shuttle site that can link you to classics in Italian or
their English translations. Or try Project
Gutenberg to read Italian classics on-line in Italian, or download
them as simple text files. And the Biblioteca dei
classici italiani has online Italian texts of the
greatest in Italian literature. I provide some direct links to Italian classics in English at Amazon
at the bottom of this page. You can also search here for Italian literature at Amazon.com. Just
enter 'Books' in the 'Search' field, and the name of the author or title
in the 'Keywords' field. Then click on the 'Go' button to see the
list. I enjoy reading, especially histories and mysteries, but books are
expensive in Italy! When I asked Italian friends where I could
find the nearest lending library, they first asked what I was talking
about, and then laughed at my ignorance of the Italian character. They explained that a library like that would be out of books in a
week! "An Italian would never return the book he
borrowed," they said with great pride. So I left it at that,
and joined the British Council's Library in Florence and read to
my heart's content. At last look, however, it seems it's closed
down. A great pity for Italians and English-speakers
alike! If you enjoy mysteries set in Italy, click on the
detective, to the right, to visit my Mysteries Set
in Italy
page. If you enjoy mysteries set in Ancient Rome, I've collected
together a page featuring some of the popular series and their
authors. Click here or on the green book, to the right, to visit my Mysteries
in Ancient Rome page. Historical novels set in Italy include Roman Warfare, the
Renaissance, World War II, and novels featuring famous works of Italian
art. Check out my Historical Novels set
in Italy page for a few you might like. I've a page with some selections of children's
books for various ages, two CDs to introduce them to opera, and
Italian Paper Dolls. Click here for my page on Thrillers
Set in Italy. This page has features espionage and
suspense books set partly or mainly in Italy. Italophiles generally love all books set in Italy. A perennial
favorite is E. M. Forster's A Room With A View. It was
adapted into an award-winning film that won over fans who had never read
the novella. If you'd like to read the novella, on-line, or
on your computer in the form of an electronic book (e-book), click here
to go to my Room With A View page. For those wanting more romance and less literature, I've put
together a page of popular
romances set in Italy, both historical and contemporary.
Lots of good bargains on this page due to the large number of romances
printed and sold, especially if you buy used copies (as low as one
cent!). For those who prefer non-fiction books about Italy, I've a page
featuring some non-fiction
books in four categories: personal experiences, history
of Italy, cookbooks, and calendars. Don't believe that all of Italy's great writers lived in the
past! Italy still produces intriguing and wonderful writers.
You can peruse the Italian
bestseller
list on the Internet Bookstore Italia site, if you'd like to get an
idea of who's who. And I've put together a page of some of the writers who've been on
the bestseller lists constantly for the past few years with various
books. Click here
to visit my Top
Italian Writers Today page. Third in the hearts of Italians is the poet Dante, after God and
Mother, but actually, not necessarily in that order.
An Italian once asked me if
I'd studied Dante and his Divine Comedy at University.
I answered,
yes.
Then he asked if I thought I understood the Commedia?
I answered his question by first explaining that I had sat through a
lecture by a professor who explained that he had a masters degree in
ancient literature and religions when he went to Italy as part of his
PhD project, then learned the Italian language fluently, and then
studied the original text of the Commedia for seven years.
He said even he could not say in all honesty that he understood the Commedia.
So there was no way he could teach us anything in the hour and an
half allotted him. He did nothing but repeat this for the hour and
an half, each time with more emphasis. Then I told the Italian
that, no, I did not understand the Commedia. It seems that was
the right answer, because he then asked me out on a date. He told
me later that he asked all foreign women that question because he
refused to date anyone who did not understand that it was impossible to
understand Dante or the Commedia. Strange guy; we only went
out once. But if you want to not understand Dante and his Divine
Comedy, and enjoy reading his beautiful Italian, and relish his
descriptions of sinners wallowing in Hell...visit my
Dante page which has the Longfellow English translation
side-by-side the original Italian. Give the page a moment to
load; it has a lot of text, but it's worth it.
I've included some scary illustrations by the artist Gustave Dore,
and there are also quick links to the various sections, next to brief
descriptions of what the section contains. If you would like a
summary of the work, and an attempt at an explanation (useless of course
because, remember, you will never understand it!), visit the
Novel Guide Summary. There's
lots of information at the site, including a biography of Dante
(use the menu items in the site's left column).
For some wonderful color images of paintings in an
early edition of the Divine Comedy, the Bodleian Library at Oxford has
them on-line: Inferno,
Pergatorio,
Paradiso.
And there is this online
exhibit of Renaissance editions. For those of you interested in poetry, I have a growing list of site
pages for you, and a few links. The market for audio books (audio-libri, talking-books)
in Italy is not developed to the stage it is in English-speaking
countries. At present, audio books are available for the sight-impaired,
and there are a few suppliers to the general market offering a
few titles. The titles on offer are generally for books out of copyright
protection, meaning classics. They are usually offered for
download as MP3 files, and sometimes available on CD-ROM
and shipped worldwide, for a hefty price. Here are the suppliers I've found to-date:
I have pages dedicated to various genre of books set in or having to
do with Italy, so why not pick your favorite and browse a bit:
Non-Fiction
(Memoirs, Cooking, History, Calendars)
Short
Stories by Italians in Dual-Language Editions
Books and Literature, Books Set in Italy, and more
Short
Stories - Dual Language Collections
Italian Literature
Libraries in Italy
Books In or About Italy
Top Italian Writers Today
Dante and his Divine Comedy
Poetry
Audio Books in Italian
Genres and Italy
