book-reviews

to write or not to write…

While in a call with a dear friend, she pointed out I am such a good storyteller and I should consider writing a book…

This sparked a core memory of more than 10 years ago: 2015, my first try at NaNoWriMo (today the site is down for a number of controversial reasons, but back then it was just a honest exercise of writing for people who wanted to have fun, and has been a wonderful experience for me).

I was then working in a role that implied international travel almost 5 days a week and my kids were still relatively small. In airport lounges and landing planes, I wrote a book of children stories to make up for the lost time with my own kids, and even had them make the drawings in the book! (its karma will somehow be balanced with their upcoming years of analysis, but it’s definitely another story).

So I went and searched for the book, and read it, eleven years later. I didn’t remember any of the stories, but overall thought “well, it’s not bad!”. Back then, I used a self-publishing platform that somehow still exists but is very expensive and basically unknown in my own country – the book is in italian!- so I decided to move it to a more known platform, and a couple of weekends of revisions later, it’s finally ready!

Also, it came out the same day that my other book, the FinOps one, did (this one is in english, but it’s a different story and a different post).

Coincidence? I don’t think so. 🙂

If you want to learn some italian by reading quirky stories, here’s the link:

Le favole di Elena e Daniele (amazon.com)

Le favole di Elena e Daniele (amazon.it)

Uh,oh…the publishing platform asked if any AI was used to write it, and I can proudly say that this was all 100% me. As is this post ;).

My own book club (2025 and 10 years wrap-up)

it’s that time of the year again, when I look back and see how many books have kept me more or less sane throughout the year.

Here’s the stats and the list, and since 2025 marked my 10 years’ experience with e-reading, I am also posting some widers stats, because basically I am that nerdy. 🙂

From 2015 to 2025 I have read 309 books (they would definitely fill a library shelf), for a total of 97629 pages. Here’s a couple of graphs for the visual people. Although I did read a good number of books in 2016, if you look at pages read, my most prolific years were the last 3, with more than a thousand pages per month read.

And here’s the full 2025 list:

  • Orbital,Samantha Harvey ,138
  • The Marriage Portrait,Maggie O’Farrell,448
  • Hamnet,Maggie O’Farrell,321
  • This Must Be the Place,Maggie O’Farrell,401
  • The Distance Between Us,Maggie O’Farrell,354
  • Our Evenings,Alan Hollinghurst,494
  • Heft ,Liz Moore ,353
  • The Unseen World,Liz Moore ,418
  • Noi due siamo uno,Matteo Spicuglia,185
  • The Edible Woman,Margaret Atwood ,353
  • The Road,Cormac McCarthy ,324
  • The Women,Kristin Hannah ,476
  • Blue Sisters,Coco Mellors,514
  • The Woman Who Lost Her Soul,Bob Shacochis ,738
  • My Friends,Hisham Matar ,461
  • Silent Spring ,Rachel Carson,155
  • We Do Not Part,Han Kang ,371
  • The City and Its Uncertain Walls,Haruki Murakami ,445
  • Elizabeth: A Novel of the Unnatural ,Ken Greenhall,146
  • The Safekeep,Yael van der Wouden ,262
  • Careless People: The explosive memoir that Meta doesn’t want you to read,Sarah Wynn-Williams ,390
  • Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination ,Karen Hao,479
  • Consider Yourself Kissed,Jessica Stanley ,337
  • Ubik,Philip K. Dick ,241
  • Confessions Of A Crap Artist,Philip K. Dick ,258
  • The Berry Pickers,Amanda Peters,295
  • Il quaderno di Maya, Isabel Allende ,403
  • The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Mitch Albom ,240
  • This Is How,M.J. Hyland ,384
  • Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in L:etter ,Mark Dunn,204
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ,Betty Smith ,622
  • The Names,Florence Knapp ,330
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day,David Sedaris,300
  • Less Than Zero,Bret Easton Ellis,204
  • La mattina dopo,Mario Calabresi ,107
  • Flesh,David Szalay ,334