{"id":1510,"date":"2012-02-11T22:21:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-11T22:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2012-12-09T13:45:56","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T13:45:56","slug":"cosa-nostra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1510","title":{"rendered":"Cosa Nostra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Cosa-Nostra-History-Sicilian-Mafia\/dp\/0340824352\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/cosa_nostra.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Cosa-Nostra-History-Sicilian-Mafia\/dp\/0340824352\" width=\"184\" height=\"274\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1512\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I finished reading Cosa Nostra tonight.  Given my affection for mafia-based entertainment (The Sopranos, Scorcese&#8217;s films, The Godfather Trilogy etc.) I was very much looking forward to discovering the truth behind it.  Although the content of the book was interesting, my enjoyment was marred for the following reasons:<\/p>\n<p>1) I frequently had to look up the meanings of words, most of which don&#8217;t occur in everyday language.  Every time this happened it disrupted my flow.<\/p>\n<p>2) I had to keep looking up places that were mentioned on Google maps.  There are maps at the front of the book but places aren&#8217;t easily located or even present on them, as far as I could tell.<\/p>\n<p>3) There are so many people involved that it&#8217;s difficult to remember who they all are.  Worse still &#8211; and this isn&#8217;t the author&#8217;s fault &#8211; everyone seems to be called Giuseppe or Antonino!  I had to makes notes on who was who as I went along, otherwise I got utterly confused.<\/p>\n<p>4) It isn&#8217;t in strict chronological order.  Where stories overlap then it&#8217;s fair enough but the author sometimes goes back and forth over the same few years.  I can see that this is necessary as there are so many interwined stories &#8211; the history of the mafia is complex &#8211; but again, I couldn&#8217;t make sense of it without making notes.  <\/p>\n<p>I have to admit that finishing the book is a relief.  I got halfway through without making notes and then had to start again because I was too confused to continue!  In summary, this book is a bit too much hard work if you&#8217;re after escapism or entertainment.  If you want to think and learn then by all means read it, but not without a cup of tea and a notebook.<\/p>\n<p>(4th in 2012)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished reading Cosa Nostra tonight. Given my affection for mafia-based entertainment (The Sopranos, Scorcese&#8217;s films, The Godfather Trilogy etc.) I was very much looking forward to discovering the truth behind it. Although the content of the book was interesting, my enjoyment was marred for the following reasons: 1) I frequently had to look up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3762,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/3762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}