Coming soon at a node near you:

• Death Valley
• DNA dragnets and civil rights
• sodium lauryl sulfate
• Vajont dam disaster
• Bhopal disaster
• Squid
• Padua
• Caporetto

A word from our sponsor:

These nodes went through the "new writeups" box faster than a prune through a short grandmother. In the best tradition of nodevertising ("brother, can you spare a vote?") you can help these writeups get the reputation they deserve.

• (currently all the writeups are comfortable with their reputation)

Open mind, pour book inside, close mind, repeat:

• "Se questo e' un uomo" by Primo Levi (excellent)
• "Seta" by Antonio Baricco (strange, not one of his best)
• "Oceano mare" by Antonio Baricco (to read, perchance to dream...)
• "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley (more gripping than I thought)
• "Il terzo reich" by Michael Burleigh (slow, biased)
• "Fear and loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson (I was expecting something more interesting)
• "Una storia semplice" by Leonardo Sciascia (excellent, one of his best)
• "The picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde (another step in my plan to read all the classics)
• "Orizzonte" by Wilbur Smith (I was sick with stomach flu, with nothing else to read...)
• "Buick 8" by Stephen King (...except these two books)
• "Lullaby" by Chuck Pahlaniuk (as good as Fight Club)
• "The strange incident of the dog in the night-time" by Mark Haddon (touching)
• "Corpo a corpo" by Iain Banks (hm, judgment suspended until I've read more of his books)
• "How to be good" by Nick Hornby (starts OK, goes nowhere, feels too smug)
• "Venere lesa" by Paolo Maurensig (useless. What were you thinking, Paolo?)
• "La variante di Luneburg" by Paolo Maurensig (excellent!)
• "Mucchio d'ossa" by Stephen King (suggested by skybluefusion, a good King book, several scary moments)
• "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller (read it! now!)
• "Niente di vero tranne gli occhi" by Giorgio Faletti (a good thriller, several poetic descriptions)
• "The wee free people" by Terry Pratchett (not one of his best)

Hey, pssst, wanna see a good movie?

• "Passato prossimo" by Chiara Tognazzi
• "Lost in Translation" by Sofia Coppola
• "Fantozzi" by Paolo Villaggio
• "The 25th hour" by Spike Lee
• "Big fish" by Tim Burton
• "Y tu mama tambien" by Alphonse Cuaron
• "Santa Maradona" by Marco Ponti
• "A/R Andata e ritorno" by Marco Ponti
• "Kill Bill vol. 1" by Quentin Tarantino
• "Emma sono io"
• "Hero" by Zhang Yimou