Chiara Barzini shares her top reads from her library. Her latest book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, is out now
Chiara Barzini is an Italian writer and screenwriter. Her latest book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, blends memoir, history and environmental reporting to examine Los Angeles’s relationship with water.
Below, check out her top literary picks…
Related reads…
Out of Sheer Rage (1997) by Geoff Dyer
Dyer set out to write a study of D H Lawrence and failed spectacularly, which is why the book is so alive. Following Lawrence’s footsteps through Taormina, Oaxaca and Taos, he turns procrastination, travel and resistance to writing into the real subject.
To the River (2011) by Olivia Laing
Laing walks the River Ouse, where Virginia Woolf drowned, moving through water, memory, history and grief in one continuous current. I believe firmly that landscapes hold emotional residue and that ghosts never leave the places they loved. This book proves it.
Writing Los Angeles (2002) edited by David L Ulin
This anthology has been a portable Los Angeles for me for decades. I return to writers such as Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and Joan Didion for their visions of a city defined by hidden rivers, contradictions and the strange overlap between paradise and scam.
Tell My Horse (1938) by Zora Neale Hurston
Based on Hurston’s travels through Haiti and Jamaica, this book blends travel writing, ethnography and the mystical.
La Storia (1974) by Elsa Morante
Set amid war, fascism and occupation, La Storia follows ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary circumstances.
Girl in a Band (2015) by Kim Gordon
I loved the rawness of this memoir. Beyond the story of Sonic Youth, what stayed with me was Gordon’s sharp account of art, identity and the experience of being a woman in worlds largely shaped by men.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by D H Lawrence
I first read it secretly under the covers as a tween and felt shocked, embarrassed and thrilled. What stayed with me was not just its erotic charge, but the intensity with which Lawrence writes about longing and desire.
