#Spooktober 22: The Silver Nose

October 22, 2022

Famed Italian author Italo Calvino, an author some intellectuals fiercely insist he never wrote fantasy or science fiction way beyond the point of the ridiculous, collected and translated 200 folktales from around the Country and published them in a vastly underrated book.

Among them, some tales will sound familiar and were already presented by Giambattista Basile in his Pentamerone, only to become famous because of Perrault or the Grimm Bros: there’s Beauty and the Beast (Bellinda and the Monster from Tuscany), Cinderella (Grattula Beddattula from Sicily), Snow White (La Bella Venezia, literally Beautiful Venice from Abruzzo), Sleeping Beauty (Sleeping Beauty and her children from Calabria), and Bluebeard (The Silver Nose from Pedimont).

Today I bring you the last one: it features the Devil, laundry and a very clever girl.

The illustration in the header comes from the fantastic project by Rebecca Yanovskaya, who illustrated the horror tabletop RolePlaying Game Bluebeard’s Wife for Magpie Games. You can see her work here.

You can read the rest on my Patreon.

movies and tv

The End of Oak Street

By the life of me, I don’t understand how’s possible that this movie was ever cleared for production. The concept is simple, and shamefully Stephen King-esque: a portion of a small suburban town gets teleported into a not particularly well-defined “age of dinosaurs,” and the

September 14, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieau

I had forgotten how much I was bored by Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but I trust I’ll like other stuff by the same author and, before tackling Piranesi, I decided to finally approach this one. Not remembering these are spin-off stories from Jonathan

September 13, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

The Singing Hills Cycle

The Single Hills cycle is a group of short novels by Nghi Vo, a queer Vietnamese-American author, and they centre around the character of Chih, a non-binary monk whose job is to record stories with the aid of their familiar spirit with a perfect memory.

September 12, 2026 9:00 am