LRussian literature, biographies, historical novels, science fiction, hard boiled, essays... According to thelast report ofItalian Publishers AssociationItalians buy more books than before the pandemic, for a total, in 2022, of 83,950 new titles printed. And who knows how many of these landed on a Boomer’s sofa… Because, let’s face it, the book, sofa and plaid trio offers large spaces of pleasure, difficult to describe and impossible to impose.
The IEA report also tells us that the generations most dedicated to reading are the youngest: so where (and if) is the difference? There is a Boomer style in the approach to the book? «Reading is a gesture that has spanned the centuries and has changed profoundly. The digital revolution has led us to read “outside the book” in digital places that produce new forms of writing and therefore reading” explains Lodovica Braida, professor of History of printing and publishing at the University of Milan. And he continues: «We can certainly say that the Boomer generations still preferably read on paper».
Publishers know this and work carefully on it: the format, the cover, and even the font are part of the fortune of a book. Paper is evaluated by touch, but the most elusive and romantic element for those who love books is the smell, “as good as that of a freshly baked michetta” wrote the crime writer from Lake Lecco, Andrea Vitali. According to the English chemist Andy Brunning, the greater or lesser quantity of cellulose and lignin in the paper gives the pages a smell that should resemble grass and vanillato. And it must mean something if Karl Lagerfeld and Wallpaper launched in 2012 Paper passion perfumea perfume inspired by the pages of a (good) book.
Stories within stories
Most loved books? Impossible to make a case study. Boomers are unabashedly omnivores. And, proud of their history, consider themselves innovators: they broke with the peasant world of their fathers, starting the country towards modernization. «I like our past, I am fascinated by the diaspora of emigrants in America, from Life by Melania Mazzucco to The Lady from Ellis Island by Mimmo Cangemi to the dazed daily life of John Fante. I love the History of yesterday that reverberates in the present, as in M by Scurati. I like stories of apparently sloppy women but with surprising lives (strong French women, from Change the water to the flowers by Valérie Perrin to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery), the novels of faceless writers (My Brilliant Friend) and family stories, from Márquez’s Buendia to The Karnowsky family by Singer, or the bittersweet epic of Lions of Sicily by Stefania Auci» lists Titti Marciano, who is a doctor and reads during the night watches.
Some authors, then, adhere to the golden age in their narrative, from the 1950s onwards. Like Edoardo Nesi, with his saga of 70s entrepreneurship. Or the recent one Boom! by Marcello Dominthe. Or again Five days in thirty years by Francesco Fiorentino, a disillusioned photograph of a group of twenty-year-olds in the 70s, then adults and torn by life. “Everyone cultivated their own dream and expected extraordinary things,” he says Florentine, teacher and French scholar, Boomer in love with books, even those missing, perhaps forgotten on the train. «The opportunity to snoop inside the lives of others, imagine stories. Once I found a sentimental novel in a pub with lots of folded corners, every few pages. I imagined a reader who was constantly interrupted, a woman who had little time for herself. In the last 100 pages there were no more creases. Was it because she had lost him? I preferred to think that she got bored and moved on to something else.”
We build stories within stories, because a book belongs to those who write it but above all to those who read it. And if we like forgotten books, we often completely forget about the book we read, but not the influences it had on us.
Boomers like “brick”
Maurizio De Giovannibeloved author, father of detectives who sell thousands of copies, does not forget books. He admits that he is interested in stories and if they need breathing space, it’s fine if they exceed 500 pages.And. Your favorite tome? «I’d like to start by saying that I like reading everything, especially South American authors, Márquez above all. The book of my heart is the Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas, 1313 pages)». Because yes, we also like “bricks”. No, not the «minimalist Polish brick of a writer who committed suicide at a very young age, copies sold: two» as Giacomo Poretti said in Three men and one leg.
Bricks in the quantitative sense, whereby the challenge of reaching the end accentuates the pleasure of the content. Books of weight, physical and mental, adventures in space or in the human soul. Hanya Yanagihara is an intergenerational champion with A life like many (1104). It is in good company with other best sellers: ItStephen King’s swag (1216), The goldfinch by Donna Tartt (892) e The eighth life by Nino Haratischwili (1200) now in bookstores with The missing light (736). And many others, including the tomes of the Swiss crime writer Joël Dicker. «A marathon runner’s test, you need a physicist» jokes Gianluigi Veglia, a bibliophile chemist. But if the undertaking is difficult (or too boring), use as a doorstop is authorised. «In this case, I quote Daniel Pennac who cleared once and for all the possibility of abandoning a book if you don’t like it. Or the great Vasquez Montalban: his Pepe Carvalho he burned books in the fireplace». It can always be worse.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Rizzoli896 pages, €17.50
Boomers crazy for titles
Have you ever read a book entitled All’s well that ends well? AND Under the red, white and blue? In and out of the water? The last man in Europe? Instead you read them, and with gusto too. I am the discarded titles of some bestsellers of recent years (taken from Speaking of books, Hyperborea) And correspond to War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, 1984. Sometimes chosen directly by the author who, as the case of Nabokov had proposed for his Lolita The kingdom by the sea. Luckily the publishers intervened.
«The title is important» says Donatella di Pietrantonioavid reader and bestselling author The Arminuta (The return, in Abruzzo dialect). «It can be attractive or repellent or even boring, and if the title already is… I think about it for a long time for my books. I try to choose one that contains the main themes, synthesizing them as much as possible, that brings the story inside.”
From novel to comic
Millennials who work and still live with their families seem to read more than their peers who do not live with their parents and among Boomers, those who live with children read more on average than those who live alone. Therefore a profitable exchange between generations is desirable: each passes something on to the other as in the game we played with the protagonists of our covers and which you can see on @iodonna_it). «Great help in this sense can come from graphic novels much appreciated by younger people. Many classics of world literature have been adapted, such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and La luna ei bonfires by Cesare Pavese, authors that perhaps one would never have thought of tackling” specifies Lodovica Braida who sees it as “a generational transition, an important responsibility of us Boomers”.
We willingly take on this responsibility, also willing to expand our digital skills. However, let us still wander in those magical places that are libraries, castles of adventure and knowledge. Because, to paraphrase Nazim Hikmet, the most beautiful book is the one we haven’t read (yet).
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