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r/italianlearning•
Siculo

Novel Recomendations

Ciao ragazzi

One of the problems I have found with my learning is that I can at a basic level understand most of what I am reading. However, when it comes to actual conversation, I can only go so far before I realize I don't know much about conversing in Italiano besides like 3 or 4 exchanges.

But to get to the point, does anyone have any good non fiction or fiction novel recommendations? I'm hoping by reading some easier books in Italian that I will pick up conversational matter through the dialogue.

Please nothing old or antequated.. no Dante or anything like that. Anything from the 1900s on is probably fine. I started reading Le Mie Prigioni but I think it's in dialetto so I had to put it down.

Posted Apr 23, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

29
atyjell•

Il bar sotto il mare by Stefano Benni could be a good choice, it might not be the easiest Italian to read, but it’s contemporary Italian and it’s a story made of short novels. One of my favorite books!

2
SiculoOPEN native, IT intermediate•

Grazie mille

2
sampierdarena•

Prova Favole al telefono di Gianni Rodari.

Lo puoi trovare anche online:

http://www.icbriatico.it/images/pdf/Biblioteca_Digitale/Fiabe_e_Favole/Favole_al_telefono.pdf

Buona lettura!

2
zuppaiaiaIT native•

Not dialect, just antiquate Italian. I would avoid anything written before the forties. You were suggested Stefano Benni, he's great, I agree. I would also add Italo Calvino

2
SiculoOPEN native, IT intermediate•

Thank you for the reply. Any particular historical reason for before the 40s? Pre 40s English is still really modern so I'm just curious

2
zuppaiaiaIT native•

Grammar wasn't that different, the writing style was complicated, a little pretentious. People wanted to show that they were cultured, so they built those complicated and flourished sentences. Then neorealism came and writers simplified their style. All but Eco. Umberto Eco stayed pretentious even in the twentyfirst century. One of my favourite authors, but gosh was he heavy. Italo Svevo, a friend of Joyce, wanted to simplify his style, but he was still immersed in that literary environment, his language came out a little stiff. Then there are authors like D'Annunzio that make you long for death for how ampollous they are.

2
an_average_potato_1•

Sure. Licia Troisi writes fantasy books for young readers. They are very intermediate friendly and contain a lot of useful contemporary Italian. The books are not the best fantasy in the world, or particularly original, but they are still really enjoyable and definitely useful.

1
CorsoBrancaleoneIT /PT bilingual•

How about Fumetti? Comics are mostly dialogs. If you tell what kind of stories do you like, I can give some suggestions.

1
MositiusISL native, IT intermediate•

I second this. I don't even like comic books in general, but they're a great way to pick up vocabulary without struggling to understand the context, given the pictures. I started with Dylan Dog, and then moved on to some shorter novels with relative ease.

2