Im studying Italian so I thought I give it a try with reading a book in Italian. Do you have any suggestions on books that can be comprehensive for an intermediate level?
It really depends on your interests first (what genres do you enjoy?), your actual level (intermediate can mean a lot of things…) and what you intend to focus your attention on more (learning every day expressions? item names? grammar?). In case you haven’t tried any Italian book yet, if I were you I’d try different books with different goals, it’ll be much easier than trying to find a single “comprehensive” novel.
For instance, you could try “easy books” like short stories or children literature, even “Topolino” aka Mickey Mouse comic strips enjoyed with a weekly publication in Italy (it contains both strips and short articles that are easy to understand, take a look at the many previews on their website before buying. Also, you can find plenty of older copies as it dates back from the 30s!), or crime stories you already enjoyed in English, and don’t forget something more “academic”, like a parallel text book so that you can have both languages at hand and won’t need to stop too often to check the dictionary. There are even textbooks with hints, help and questions along the way to check your understanding of a particular book. I suggest you do that because, once you’ve tried those ones, you can tackle authors you’ve never tried before with more confidence.
Said that, here a short list to consider, some quite easy, other maybe more challenging but I’d say pretty comprehensive:
* Io non ho paura by Niccolò Ammaniti
* Anything by Italo Calvino (ie. Il Barone Rampante, Marcovaldo, Fables, Short stories…), Dino Buzzati (Il Colombre) and Gianni Rodari (Favole al telefono)
* Don Camillo by Giovannino Guareschi (a favorite of mine!)
* Try some books by Stefano Benni and see how you like them (Il bar sotto il mare, Saltatempo, Bar Sport…)
* Anything by Carlo Lucarelli if you’d like to read some crime stories, the language is pretty straightforward and shouldn’t give you headaches (also, of course, Andrea Camilleri’s, but in that case expect a lot of Sicilian words that might be quite hard to understand)
A couple of other suggestions:
* Take a look at raiplaysound website (curated by Italian public broadcast service) and look for “audiolibri” (audiobooks). The audio is quite clear and the slow reading should help. I’d suggest you try out new and old ones possibly following along with the textbook (if you can’t buy too many ebooks, don’t forget that you can find quite a few in the public domain, just be aware that the language could be quite old fashion for those ones), in any case you’ll find some audiobook by Calvino and Rodari that I suggested above
* Even if it might be hard to understand, come on over to r/libri where we discuss Italian books (look for older threads about easy books). Actually, for 2024 we are planning a “Reading Challenge” and Italian learners are welcome, if you’d like to challenge yourself with 12 books, or simply 12 short stories, join us (it’s a pretty relaxed challenge, look for “Minisfida di lettura”, we are testing things out until the end of the year).
2 Comments
Natalia Ginzburg, Caro Michele
It really depends on your interests first (what genres do you enjoy?), your actual level (intermediate can mean a lot of things…) and what you intend to focus your attention on more (learning every day expressions? item names? grammar?). In case you haven’t tried any Italian book yet, if I were you I’d try different books with different goals, it’ll be much easier than trying to find a single “comprehensive” novel.
For instance, you could try “easy books” like short stories or children literature, even “Topolino” aka Mickey Mouse comic strips enjoyed with a weekly publication in Italy (it contains both strips and short articles that are easy to understand, take a look at the many previews on their website before buying. Also, you can find plenty of older copies as it dates back from the 30s!), or crime stories you already enjoyed in English, and don’t forget something more “academic”, like a parallel text book so that you can have both languages at hand and won’t need to stop too often to check the dictionary. There are even textbooks with hints, help and questions along the way to check your understanding of a particular book. I suggest you do that because, once you’ve tried those ones, you can tackle authors you’ve never tried before with more confidence.
Said that, here a short list to consider, some quite easy, other maybe more challenging but I’d say pretty comprehensive:
* Io non ho paura by Niccolò Ammaniti
* Anything by Italo Calvino (ie. Il Barone Rampante, Marcovaldo, Fables, Short stories…), Dino Buzzati (Il Colombre) and Gianni Rodari (Favole al telefono)
* Don Camillo by Giovannino Guareschi (a favorite of mine!)
* Try some books by Stefano Benni and see how you like them (Il bar sotto il mare, Saltatempo, Bar Sport…)
* Anything by Carlo Lucarelli if you’d like to read some crime stories, the language is pretty straightforward and shouldn’t give you headaches (also, of course, Andrea Camilleri’s, but in that case expect a lot of Sicilian words that might be quite hard to understand)
A couple of other suggestions:
* Take a look at raiplaysound website (curated by Italian public broadcast service) and look for “audiolibri” (audiobooks). The audio is quite clear and the slow reading should help. I’d suggest you try out new and old ones possibly following along with the textbook (if you can’t buy too many ebooks, don’t forget that you can find quite a few in the public domain, just be aware that the language could be quite old fashion for those ones), in any case you’ll find some audiobook by Calvino and Rodari that I suggested above
* Even if it might be hard to understand, come on over to r/libri where we discuss Italian books (look for older threads about easy books). Actually, for 2024 we are planning a “Reading Challenge” and Italian learners are welcome, if you’d like to challenge yourself with 12 books, or simply 12 short stories, join us (it’s a pretty relaxed challenge, look for “Minisfida di lettura”, we are testing things out until the end of the year).
Hope this helps and sorry for the wall of text.