Monica66's notebook entry: Jun 18, 2010 Jose Saramago is dead today in Lanzarote at the age of 88. The great Author won the Nobel for the literature in 1998. He wrote a lot of masterpieces; my favorite is Cecità in Italian (The right title should be "Essay on Blindness" in English). "Essay on blindness" and so his sequel, "Essay on lucidity", starts with an unusual situation, a paradoxical situation and "what if ... " it goes on developing from that all the plot, the drama, till the inner consequences. The imagination is at his top, the knowledge of human nature too. A human nature without voiles, without lies, his characters are human, too human, unforgettable. If you'll read that book you have to be prepared to see men in his worse aspects, you have to be prepared to fall down in the Inferno, the worse one, that built by men themselves. In your travel Saramago will help you with of the most beautiful female characters of modern literature, an alter ego of Dante's Virgilio. Saramago shows in most of his book his truly, sincere love and appreciation for women. The women in his book are a sort of realistic, modern Messiahs. They don't abjure, they are realistic, they die serene having respected till the end their principles. In the two Essay you will found a sort of social experiment. Saramago starts his social exepriment with his "what if ... " and then bring the experiment to a sort of realist end. An End that is not surely the classical happy end or the end that editors in chief may desire to sell their books better. Saramago in the last years wrote down his thoughts on a blog called "The Saramago's exercise book" (maybe better "notebook" instead of exercise book?). On his blog he wrote even some strong posts concerning Italian politicians (Berlusconi) and Italian vices. Berlusconi's press (Einaudi) because of those posts didn't publish this book anymore. I'm really sad.

First notebook entry: Introducing myself Hello everybody, I'm Monica and I came from Italy. I'm 44 years old and I was happily married with two children. They are really fantastic; the first is a girl and the second a boy, now they are 9 and 8 years old. I like English language and I knew it better some years ago, now having not occasion to speak, read and write I'm forgetting most of the things I knew. This is the reason why I'm here. I hope to find time to exercise my English in a friendly way and according with my full of duty life. In the past I was even used to read three, four books in English; light and adventurous one. Indiana Jones, Steven King, Spy story, etc. nothing serious. May be with your help I can start reading again. My favorite hobby is reading book, now only in Italian but in my language I love reading very good literature. I'm afraid I'll never became a really good English speaker because of my love and passion for my language. I discovered this passion last in my life, but now I can't imagine living without the sound of my language when used by great authors and the deep reflections and effects that that sounds "suscitano" produce on me. Hoping not having annoyed you, Monica