On the occasion of the World Book Day, this year our school wants to introduce its staff and staff and students by sharing their thoughts about the last book they read. Enjoy!
Antigone by Sofocle.
It’s a Greek tragedy that narrates the facts of Edipo’s Family, in specific his daughter Antigone who’s going to die because she wants to go against the law of her uncle and tyrant Creonte that forbids her to give a respectable sepulture to her brother, since he’s considered to have betrayed his country of origin.
I really liked this book and I advise it to all the people interested in the ancient Greece.
Elisabetta Casonato – Student
Historical Atlas by Zanichelli
The last book I read is not really a piece of narrative: rather, it is a historical atlas edited by Zanichelli. I found a shabby copy of such Atlas in a forlorn shelf of Oderzo’s bookshop. It is, in fact, a 2012 reprint of the 2010 edition bearing the same name.
What I love about atlases is their ability to convey information by stimulating our visual perception, and they usually do so in a witty and pleasant way. Data are easier to grasp and you would not guess how many things can be plotted on a map. It truly triggers your imagination and you can picture yourself travelling across borders and getting acquainted with different peoples and cultures. I believe this is not just an aid we use to study history for the sake of understanding current events: historical atlases help us engage with different worlds and ways of thinking, which soon become intuitive once we familiarise with cultures’ distirbution across the expanse of Planet Earth.
Andrea Marcelli – History Teacher
Risultati solidi in una società liquida by Sebastiano Zanolli and Giacomo Dall’Ava
I bought this book a week ago at a business conference.
This book contains 230 questions with no answer. The reader is taken through a journey through which he/she will be able to find the answers to those questions.
The goal of this journey is to clarify the reader’s values, talents, skills, past experiences in order to define a clear new goal to go towards to. The reader is brought to consider his/her own creativity, to know about the “moodboard” and the “tinkering” strategies, his/her ability to accept change and become flexible, build personal branding and a circle of influence.
This is a book suitable for all those who are considering to start a project, whether small or big. Sebastiano Zanolli and Giacomo Dall’Ava didn’t really write anything new, but they wisely built a collection of all the most important questions someone should ask himself/herself along with several of the most famous tools that enable a dreamer to make his dream come true.
Elettra Favotto – Administration
If This is a Man by Primo Levi.
I read this book twice in my life and the latest was last December because I had an exam in Italian Literature at the university.
The main character is the author himself, who talks about his experience in the Second World War in the internment camp of Auschwitz, where he lived from 1943 to 1945. He tells the several facts about his life there and all the situations he had to cope with until the day of liberation, which was on January 27th 1945, thanks to the arrival of the Russians.
I suggest this book to all of you, because…”If understanding is impossible, knowledge is necessary”.
Silvia Zanusso – Librarian
Zhuang-zi (the title of the book is said to be the name of the author as well)
It is one of the three most important Taoist books and the second I’ve read. It is a bunch of ideas, suggestions and thoughts with no apparent meaning. Reading this book, you are somehow forced to take apart your sense of judgment in order to find out what the author wanted to say. The fun part is, the author most likely didn’t want to say something specific and probably didn’t have a scope either.
If I had to choose a quotation I would use this one: “l’uomo singolare” rispose Kong-zi “è tale rispetto agli uomini ma è pari al cielo. Così è stato detto: “l’uomo meschino rispetto al cielo è un uomo superiore fra gli uomini; l’uomo superiore fra gli uomini è un uomo meschino rispetto al cielo”.
Giovanni Pujatti – Administration
Refugee by Alan Gratz
In this book, Alan Gratz compares the destiny of three teenagers, who have to flee their country in different historical contexts and for different reasons: Josef, a Jewish boy, who is obliged to flee Nazi Germany with his family in 1938. Isabel a Cuban girl, who flees Castro’s dictatorship with her family in 1994. Mahmoud, who flees, with his family the currently ongoing Syrian war no later than 2005.
The interest of these three stories is their purpose to make strong connections with the real historical contexts, accurately reported by the author, focusing on the central figure of each of these teenagers, who live such difficult experiences, but handle very complex situations with a great sense of responsibility, courage and concern about their family.
Alexandra Juster – Teacher