spaziolibero

This book collects four short(ish) texts by Neil Gaiman, beautifully illustrated by Chris Riddell, all broadly on the topic of creating, and enjoyng (or not) other people's creations. These kind of books, I think, always risk of suffering of what in Italy could be called "Baci Perugina Syndrome", meaning that they can be nothing more than a mishmash of beautifully written platitudes and banalities. Gaiman being Gaiman, this is emphatically not the case. Granted, it's a very short book, that reads in an hour or even less, but it addresses issues anything but banal, in an anything but banal way. From the ode to free speech and free circulation of ideas of the starting Credo , to the wholehearted invitation to create (books, dance, music, paintings, everything ) of the last, and longest Make Good Art , the whole book is a delight for the eyes, the brain and the heart. More, it's a precious insight in the mind of one of the greatest creators of our...

Sono rimasto fermo per più di un mese sul blog (quasi due, in effetti) e ho in arretrato almeno sette o otto recensioni su Goodreads. Rimedierò. Prima o poi. Sigh.   I first read the original short story in the seminal italian sci-fi anthology Le meraviglie del possibile when I was a kid (twenty-five years ago at least, alas), and I loved it. I re-read it (for the first time in English) while reading the novel, and as it happened with Ender's Game , I think it's much, much better. The short story has a strength, an urgency, an intimacy that the two-hundred-ish extra pages of the novel do nothing but dilute, while adding nothing really important. So, if you want to read (as you should) about the rise and fall of Charlie Gordon and Algernon, just skip the novel entirely and try to locate a good anthology with the short story in it. If you read Italian, Le meraviglie del possibile is a great one. // Ho letto per la prima volta il racconto originale almeno ven...