What Italians Are Reading?

If you are ever curious as to what Italians are reading, there are several resources out there that I want to bring to your attention. Sometimes I find myself dismayed at how there seem to be more foreign authors on the Italian "best-seller" lists than Italian authors.

Of course, there have been some popular Italian books in the past year or two, notably Roberto Saviano's Gomorra (also recently made into a movie), which chronicles the Camorra and their grip on the daily and economic life in Campania; Paolo Giordano's award winning La solitudine dei numeri primi (read my review) - a story about two children who experience hardships, perhaps even tragedies, as children and how they come of age and grow up, always holding on their pasts and problems; and, lastly, Fabio Volo's Il giorno in più (read my review), a very poignant love story.

It's no surprise that these two books have sold well (by the way, the three examples quoted above were drawn from my memory -- there have been other great books published as well, so their lack of inclusion does not mean that they are not worth reading) as they seem to appeal to the Italian sensibilities.

So what are Italians reading? To get a sense for this, here are some resources that I think will prove helpful:

• Check out IBS.it -- they have a listing of the 100 most popular books sold. While it's not exactly "scienitific", it's a good resource if you want to know what Italians are buying (presuming that a majority of the purchases are done by Italians); it's also a great way to find popular, new books that have just been released
  
  
• La Repubblica's Bookowski -- this blog, written by Dario Olivero, looks are recently published material (sometimes less recent books, too) that coincide with things that happen in the news or as well as historical events (during the recent L'Aquila earthquake, he did a post on the Messina earthquake in 1908 and highlighted a publication about it).
  
  
• Wuz -- a site that is full of reviews that focuses on culture and performances with reviews of books, DVD's, music, and other cultural mediums. There are often interviews with authors as well as excerpts from books. It's a part of Internet Bookshop Italia.
  
  
• TuttoLibri -- a weekly publication by La Stampa that talks about recently published books, both Italian as well as literature in translation, highlighting non-Italian authors and their works. There is also a classification of popular books at the end. This weekly publication is available on their web site and can be downloaded in pdf (page by page, unfortunately)
  
  
• Fahrenheit -- a radio program on Rai Radio 3; features daily interviews with authors, Italian and non-Italian; probably requires a good deal of fluency to listen to the interviews. There are also articles on their web site as well as links to other radio content. The interviews last about 20 minutes in length, and their podcasts are available for download from their site and also through RSS feed.