4 REASONS WHY “NORWEGIAN WOOD” IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE BOOKS

Hi guys! Today I want talk about a fantastic book, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, one of the most famous Japanese writers. 

It is the story of a teenager (Tōru Watanabe) traumatized by his best friend’s suicide,  which happened some years before the narration begins. He meets a lot of characters, teenagers and adults, who bring him from the carelessness and the liabilities of teenage, to maturity and to the personal acceptance of adulthood.

It is one of my favorite books, as well as the coming-of-age story par excellence, and I’m ready to point out why.

WARNING! HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE: 6 FACTS ABOUT MY FAVOURITE BOOK

Hello guys! In today’s post I’m going to talk about my favourite book ever: “The catcher in the rye”, written by J. D. Salinger. I’ve heard lots of opposing opinions on the book: there are the ones who love both the novel and its protagonist, Holden, and the ones who don’t.

 But I’m not here to discuss that, I’m here to talk about a few very interesting facts about the book, its protagonist and its author.

It isn’t an ordinary book because behind its story there’s a lot to know!

But,  first of all,  let me give you a brief summary of the story: Holden Caulfield, a sixteen- year-old guy, is the protagonist of the book. He’s grown up in a false society, full of corruption, conformism and “phonies”, that’s the way he calls hypocritical people. After being expelled from yet another school, he gets even more disappointed and frustrated by the world and by people: the only person he loves is his little sister, Phoebe.

END OF AN ERA: THE FALL OF THE WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE

Hello everyone! I’m back with a new post about ancient history. Today I would like to tell you   about the  five reasons why the Western Roman Empire fell. 

            

The Roman Empire remained one of the most powerful in history, but it was first divided in Western and Eastern Roman Empire (395 A.D.), and then, in 476 A.D., the Western part ended (the Eastern one existed until 1453 A.D.), but why one of the most powerful Empire in history fell?

Here are five reasons:

THE 10 FASTEST CARS IN THE WORLD

Once there were few cars capable of exceeding 400 km/h, but this is no longer the case. So let’s see which are the 10 fastest cars in the world. They all axceed abundantly 300 km/h and, at the same time, accelerating from 0 to 100 km/h in about three seconds. What is it to build such powerful cars and to enter the 10 fastest in the world? It  is first of all power and then the aerodynamics, both to penetrate the air and to prevent the car from tacking off. It may seem paradoxical, but the speeds involved are higher than many small planes. Returning to my ranking, I lined up the cars (from the least to the fastest) checking that they are currently in production and that they are approved for road use.

YOUTUBE - SOME SUGGESTIONS FROM LORENZO

Hello dear readers! How are you? How are you coping with quarantine and lockdown? Not easy, I Know. What about some videos? Music videos, more precisely. You know I spend a lot of time on youtube searching for something new to love. And today I have decided to share with you my favourite youtube videos at the moment. Let me start with a video taken from The Voice Australia. These two contestants, Zeek and Lara, are amazing singers, I really love their voices. They sing one of Billie Eilish's  songs,  LOVELY!

DIVINE COMEDY FROM OLEVANO TO JAPAN!

Can Olevano Romano, a very small town in Lazio, not far from my own very small native town, be connected with Japan via France and be a connecting thread to Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri? Oh yes! And I’m going to explain it in this post. Just be patient enough to read till the end.

OTHELLO: EROS & THANATOS

In “Othello”, famous tragedy written by William Shakespeare in the 17th century, we find Desdemona murdered by Othello, her husband, which is an example of femicide. Therefore, already in the 17^th century there was the idea of “crime of passion" which unfortunately is still relevant. 

Now the question is: “Why does a man kill his lover ?”

FREUD: EROS & THANATOS

                                    

According to Sigmund Freud in the subconscious of human beings, two basic instincts (or drives) coexist, which he calls Eros and Thanatos.  

EROS

It is the life drive, the tendency of human beings to look for pleasure, either carnal pleasure or moral pleasure. Eros is represented by a true relationship, true love or true friendship, but also the happiness due to good acts. In Othello, we can find Eros in the scene of elopement of Desdemona and Othello, but also in that of the murder.

THANATOS

 On the contrary, Thanatos is the aggressive drive, the instinct of death, the instinct to destroy everything. It represents the manifestation of anger and of frustration of a person, a blind rage, which brings human beings to do all manner of things in order to vent this aggression, but with the result to be deleterious at the end.

HOW DO BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS WORK ?

FIRST ATTEMPTS

In 1881 a physician named William Halsted successfully carried out a blood transfusion injecting his blood in his sister Minnie who was dying for a hemorrhage after giving birth to her child. This was one of the few successful cases,      in which that was possible, because they had the same blood type (which is not guaranteed even among close relatives). One of the first experiments was made in 1667 by Jean Baptiste Denys,      who tested this practice on a man called Antoine Mauroy using the blood of a sheep to treat his psychosis.  At the first try everything seemed good,   but after the second one he started to run a fever, had a pain in his lower back and a sting in his arm, then he urinated a thick black liquid.

TO ALL THE BOYS, P.S. I STILL LOVE YOU

Yesterday I saw a beautiful film and I think it was perfect for Valentine's day. It is the sequel of the movie "To all the boys I've loved before", called "To all the boys, P.S. I still love you". It is adapted from a best-selling series of books and it's an interesting addition to a story of young love that doesn't end with the first big swoon.

LET'S SCREAM!

Even if I'm a little late for our monthly appointment, here I am back with you guys. Today I’d like to talk about a very funny topic concerning art and Photoshop lovers. I will rank the five funniest and most creative changes to Munch's picture "The Scream". This work of art is very famous and also rather upsetting in the original version. But which is your favourite parody?

KATHERINE JOHNSON - THE NASA COMPUTER DIED 101

Katherine Johnson was a NASA mathematician who broke social and racial barriers. She died on the 24^th February at the age of 101. She was an African-American woman who had a key role in many NASA projects. She calculated rocket trajectories and Earth orbits for Nasa's early space missions. Ms Johnson verified the calculations made by new electronic computers before that flight. Ms Johnson had previously calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She also played an important role in sending humans to the Moon. She was one of the first women and especially black women to work for NASA.