What books will you be reading this summer? Here are a few titles that particularly affected us and we would like to share with you.
Giulia recommends two topical essays that can open up new perspectives and tells: “The Incredible Journey of Plants (Stefano Mancuso) takes us through the discovery of how plants navigate around the world, how they bring life to barren islands, how they are able to grow in inaccessible and inhospitable places, how they manage to travel through time and how they convince animals to be transported anywhere. Plants tell stories of pioneers, fugitives, veterans, fighters, hermits, and people of the time.
21 lessons for the 21st century (Yuval Harari), on the other hand, addresses some of the most urgent issues on the contemporary global agenda: in a world flooded with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Censorship operates not by blocking the flow of information, but by flooding people with misinformation and distractions”.
“If this book empowers even a handful of people to join the debate about the future of our species, it has done its job.”
Yuval Harari”
Alessandro, recommends very different titles. His first suggestion is to revisit the fantastic novel The Neverending Story (Michael Ende) which, reinterpreted in a modern way, places us metaphorically and with the right attention in front of the theme of ideals, fantasy and one’s own ego. The second suggestion regards the incredible adventures of Shackleton and Mallory-Irvine, respectively with Endurance and Lost on Everest. Alessandro says, “These are two incredible stories of people pushing the boundaries of the unknown. They speak of a time when the boundaries of the world were still unknown and human beings constantly lived in the uncertainty of the new. And this has a direct connection with our contemporary experience: how can we deal with the challenges brought by the uncertainty of the present day?”
Francesca suggests reading Vito Mancuso’s La forza di essere miglioria reflection on the nature of good and its urgency.
“Being better has become an urgency, and ethical and spiritual work an unpostponable necessity. But how can the desire to practice the good be born in us?”
Vito Mancuso
Elena suggests Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything. “A flowing, wonderfully written book to approach an integral reading of so many aspects of reality.”
Finally, we conclude with a comic book suggested by Susan: I kill giants. “In the past few months we’ve had so much fear and so many scares. Personally, of giants I have sensed many, around and within us. That’s why I think it’s easy to connect with this story that comes across as a comic book but, in my eyes, is all poetry!”
