Thousands of titles between shelves, books of all kinds. You can also see titles of films, music and much more. Areas, sitting rooms and corridors where to exhibit paintings and art works. We are taking about the laFeltrinelli bookstores, where a new way of understanding and experiencing reading comes alive, where those who come in with the sole scope to take a book discover new inspiration and interest. Their directors will tell us these fascinating places, from north to south, from Milan to Catania. Indeed who better than them to suggest, between some sip of coffee, which book to read and which music to listen to.
Few weeks ago, two important cultural stores in Milan became as one once for all: laFeltrinelli Duomo. It used to be two until beginning of the year: the glorious bookstore Feltrinelli Duomo and the RicordiMediaStores of Vittorio Emanuele Gallery. Two entrances connected by a direct way, with different signs but one director, Enrica Cavallari. A woman that is proudly looking at this wonderful place today, which has literally revived, where the vastness of 2,500 sq m full of 70,000 book titles, 18,000 music titles, 8,000 DVD’s and 6,500 music scores stands out even more. Since it’s inauguration, many have already taken possession of the armchairs in the reading areas, of the study table, of the comfortable couch in the laEffe sitting room or of the ottoman occupying the centre of the exhibition area. Once the bewildered jubilation with the crowd at the inauguration, the hustle and cheerful astonishment of habitués is over, Enrica attempts to get used to such new space she knows very well and keeps on discovering.
I suggest a book and a film
Number of pages: 160 Price: € 7,50 euro ISBN: 9788807811425
It’s not time for heavy readings: the rehash of a bookstore, such as Milano Duomo, doesn’t leave time or mental energies for hardly anything. This is how I got myself into reading La promessa (The pledge) (Feltrinelli) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. I thought I would relax by reading a crime novel. I had a masterpiece in front of me: the event of police commissioner Matthäi, aloof and infallible, who gives his word to a mother he would find the killer of her child and thus changes the rest of his life, is one of those readings you cannot get away from once you finish the book. It stays inside, and works.
And if it has to be a crime thriller, one of the films that convinced end moved me most in the last few years is Il segreto dei suoi occhi (The secret in their eyes) by Juan José Campanella from Argentina, Academy Award as best foreign film in 2010. The story of a murder investigation lasting twenty-five years, a love story lasting even longer, and the tragic history of Argentina that invades all aspects of this private and criminal event. The best meeting point between Raymond Chandler’s painful human nature and Jorge Luis Borges’ geometric metaphysics.
