Looking through last year’s reading list, read 23 books in 2018, mostly Novels, almost all read before football season, about a half-dozen re-reads from previous years, the highlights of the new reads: Empire Falls by Richard Russo, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, and Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.
Starting this year with My Brilliant Friend by the Italian writer Elena Ferrante. You might’ve heard of it from HBO’s ongoing miniseries, filmed in Italy and fully scripted in Italian. The novels themselves are translated from Italian and might be partly why the writing comes across so refreshingly matter-of-fact. No flashbacks, nor much recounting of family history; just a total immersion into late-50s/early-60s Napoli Italy.