Our trip through LaFeltrinelli bookshops continues. Each single shelf is crammed with a scent that recalls the past, faces the future and is nourished by the present. And poetry, music and cinema are perfect roommates of a house that welcomes every day thousands of people and gives the opportunity to alienate oneself from arduous commitments in order to give space to reading or to an exhibition. Their directors are the “guardians” of these fervid places of cultural inspiration, who address us without fail to the best books or notes to listen to on a mild afternoon.

In 2005, LaFeltrinelli books and music of Viale Marconi, a real corner inhabited by thousands of books, CD’s and LP’s that cherish the days of passers-by, arises in Rome, in the caput mundi. After ten years, La Feltrinelli of Viale Marconi is still seen as a fundamental stopover of cultural and artistic pilgrimage. It includes about 36,000 books that one can easily leaf through within the well-lighted sitting areas, which turn into welcoming study rooms, children’s and students’ shelter, when the need arises. Compared to a parent that knows her children well, but never stops wondering about the extraordinary developments growth involves, director of Viale Marconi Sara Di Matteo didn’t stop yet to be amazed by the valour of such adolescent “daughter”.

I recommend a book and a CD

I’ve been having this little book consisting of 160 pages in my hands for some time, but the title The Sense of an Ending disheartened me a bit. A novel by Julian Barnes. Then I started it and was overwhelmed by a simple story at first reading, which however expands through a narration that is exceptional in my opinion. If I think that Tony Webster is old at the beginning of the book, and that immediately after he and his friends are young, through recollection and reconstruction of memory, and then I find them at the end of the few pages, at the end of their existence, I understand that the real main character is Time and the assertive role it has in the narration. This is why I recommend reading it all in once, without interruptions, so not to lose the Sense of Time explained by the writing.

 

 

Instead, Breakfast on the morning tram by the American jazz singer Stacey Kent is a CD for all those who love jazz and swing, warm and pleasing ambiences. To stick to the subject of books, four tracks were actually written for her by the great English writer Kazuo Ishiguro (do you remember The Remains of the Day?), and she interprets them magnificently, creating atmospheres of rare beauty.

 

 

Brano consigliato per la lettura di questo articolo: Breakfast on the Morning Tram – Stacey Kent