Fantascienza!

The Italians have a wonderful word for "science fiction." Fantascienza combines fantasy and sci-fi, and covers both. Cool, huh? And apparently, some Italians like the genre as much as I do. Check it out, there are some Trekkies here:

Heck yeah! And, apparently, we've got a few Potterheads as well:

I bought this copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban just this morning. :) If you are thinking to yourself, "That was a silly purchase, since she already owns a copy of the book and can't really read Italian anway," well, I won't argue. But rather than thinking about how idiotic it is to buy something you can't read, just think of it as a collector's item. People collect all kinds of things that are completely and utterly useless. Some collect stamps, some collect teddy bears, some collect Barbie dolls, some collect Precious Moments...and I collect books. Maybe it'll only sit on a shelf and collect dust for the rest of its existence, but it brings me all kinds of happiness to own it! I also thought about purchasing an Italian copy of Il Signore degli Anelli (The Lord of the Rings), but none of the copies I found were pretty enough to tempt me.

I did buy one more book this morning, because it was too cool. Here's a picture of it:

It seemed very appropriate, since I just visited Shelley's and Keats' graves, and they were all Italophiles. I love all their poetry...and this book isn't quite so impractical. It has the English on one side and the Italian on the other. I love comparing the two and trying to figure out the Italian words. There's no doubt, the Italian sounds much more musical when you say it, but I bet something gets lost in translation. How could you really translate the magic of Byron?

Well, as you have figured out by now, I've spent most of the day so far shopping. La Feltrinelli is the name of the big books and music store here, and although I had visited it before, I still found it necessary to poke around in it for an hour and a half this morning. If any of you have been unfortunate enough to be dragged along while I book shop, rest assured, I'm just as bad here. Fortunately, none of my roommates were with me, so I wasn't torturing anyone! I also picked up a few souvenirs to take back to my family and a couple of postcards to add to my collection (they're going on the wall when I get home). So it's been a very productive morning, but unfortunately, not much of an interesting narrative can come out of it. I need to study for tomorrow's quiz, though, and catch up on some reading for class, so I guess I better wrap up anyway. Buona giornata!