Reading Italy

From the romantic to the everyday, from travel literature to genre books set there, these are my favorite books with Italy as a centerpiece in some way.
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307

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307

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317

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317

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317

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317

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317

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317

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317

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325

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325

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325

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325

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325

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325

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325

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332

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332

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336

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336

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342

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346

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346

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352

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352

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352

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352

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352

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361

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361

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365

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365

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369

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369

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369

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369

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369

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374

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374

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374

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3.68 avg rating — 183,770 ratings
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378

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378

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381

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381

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381

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385

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385

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385

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385

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390

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392

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394

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394

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394

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397

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443 books · 234 voters · list created January 11th, 2011 by Genevieve (votes) .
95 likes · 
Lists are re-scored approximately every 5 minutes.


Genevieve 2751 books
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Comments Showing 1-4 of 4 (4 new)

dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by Marco (new)

Marco Fiemozzi In the first 50 titles there are not even 10 books by Italian authors.


message 2: by Genevieve (new)

Genevieve Marco wrote: "In the first 50 titles there are not even 10 books by Italian authors."

When I started the list, it was simply books that I was reading with Italy as the primary location...but I didn't realize I had made it a public list, and it's grown tentacles in all directions as other people have added things. I'm not even sure what order the titles appear in now, because when I look at it the first title is a book I've never read! Anyway, the list reflects an American origin, by a person who didn't read Italian well enough to get through novels, so that's why it looks like it does.


message 3: by Marco (new)

Marco Fiemozzi Genevieve wrote: "Marco wrote: "In the first 50 titles there are not even 10 books by Italian authors."

When I started the list, it was simply books that I was reading with Italy as the primary location...but I did..."


Thanks for your explanation. I actually thought this list had been created by someone at GoodReads and not by users.
These days I'm preparing a list of Italian books for a friend from Australia, who doesn't speak Italian. I discovered that it is quite hard to do it because incredibly few books get translated. I only know Europe, where basically everything gets translated into Italian, French, German etc. and I was quite surprised - especially because the English-speaking market is huge, so there would probably be a place for more translated books.
Anyway, the jist of what I wanted to say is that in the end you (or the other people who contributed) cannot be blamed for not putting many Italian books in the list, simply because there are very few available to an English-speaking person!


message 4: by Genevieve (new)

Genevieve Yes, unfortunately there's very little translated - a handful of classics, of course - but then only the Elena Ferrante books, and the Inspector Montalbano books. Sadly, that's all I can think of at the moment. I'd be interested in seeing the list you make, if you would care to share it. I know there must be more out there, even if it's sadly not a lot more.


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