Magic :Р

Honestly, I am still preparing to read this book because it's... so monumental. And I keep looking for my Secret Santa. :-)

Last year I got excited about the idea of reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces. One day I just found it among piles of books in my home. It felt like Campbell's work had materialized from nowhere... No one has ever admitted to giving it to me. And my memory isn't so bad to forget how I bought this book. Omg. :-)

Thank you for your review and the opportunity to think about this novel again.

It's my favorite Hesse.

The book reminded me of a colorful lake of ideas I dived into, dissolved in it for a while and surfaced as a little more enlightened person (at least I hope so :Р).

"Child-people" firmly entered my lexicon. :-)

The Glass Bead Game is different in many aspects, so I was pleasantly surprised to encounter Siddhartha's motifs at the end of this novel. Have you read it?

Try plays about behind-the-scenes games and/or characters who sell their souls. I mean Macbeth, Richard III and Hamlet. It's like GoT. :-)

I listen to audiobooks on the plane. It's usually some exciting non-fiction books or detective page-turners. I close my eyes and focus on what I am listening to. It helps me to distract from aerophobia and the amount of time I have to spend on the plane.

>but would love to be able to read the original texts, if only I spoke Italian!

Yes. I wish I spoke Italian to read this book in the original. :-)

What do you think about Valerio Zurlini's adaptation?

The Tartar Steppe is one of my favorite books and I am so happy to see a post about it here!

I love its "complicated simplicity", its themes that completely resonate with my thoughts and life mood, its atmosphere of "magical realism without magical realism", its sense of disturbance and calm at the same moment. This book is like a lullaby that makes you anxious and sad. It's an amazing read.

I recommend all my friends to read The Tartar Steppe and every time I am pleasantly surprised that people emphasize very different things as the main point of the story.

Try one of the most famous. Murder on the Orient Express, The A.B.C. Murders, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None or Crooked House. 😉

I would recommend And Then There Were None.

It's one of the most famous novels but without Christie's iconic detectives (so it is not necessary to start with the first novels about Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple or Tommy + Tuppence).

Agatha Christie passed away almost 50 years ago but her detective works are still the best. I can't find anything as excellent as Christie's novels among modern authors. It's hard to count how many breakthrough elements she brought to the genre. Ordeal by Innocence, Five Little Pigs and Taken at the Flood are my favorite.

I like to reread Chekhov's plays. They give me comfort and I discover something new with every rereading. Uncle Vanya is my favorite. I guess I have read it 6-7 times.

My God. That's impressive. :-)

In Search of Lost Time. I have abandoned all other books because I am still reading Proust's novel (at leisurely pace, to put it mildly). My mood is varying from "what a gorgeous style and baron de Charlus is amazing" to "God Help Me!"

I started reading The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati when I learned that J. M. Coetzee had written Waiting for the Barbarians while inspired by Buzzati's novel. Now The Tartar Steppe is one of my favourite books. ❤️

Also I read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester when I learned that Stephen King had written The Jaunt as a homage to Bester's book. It's curious that Bester's novel, in its turn, is a homage to The Count of Monte Cristo. So The Stars My Destination is a great novel as The Jaunt is a great short story (and one of the scariest I have ever read).

Shakespeare created plenty of brilliant and striking characters so sometimes I am tempted to compare people I encounter with them. I think there are uncountable Portias, Iagos, Romeos, Shylocks, Falstaffs in our real life... Not to mention how many people are captured by existential suffering like Hamlet.