Yesterday, as I often do when I'm in Milan, I was wandering through libraries, just to have a look at the books. Suddenly, I found myself oddly driven by a compulsory need to buy, which rarely happens to me, so I bought a few books (AND The Rocky Horror Picture Show DVD!).

But what is most important here, is that, while roaming around through all these books, and seeing - oh my goodness! - so many of them, I couldn't help but thinking: when do they find the time to write them? I don't mean novelists, who may in many cases just write following their own imagination, though it's not always the case, but researchers, and journalists, and politicians, who write books about real life, and have to make researches to write even the worst of those books.
I said to myself: is it possible that people like Veltroni (Rome's mayor, and a major politician) or Vespa (a very popular journalist... well, more of an anchorman, I should say) have more time to write than I do? Ok, they must have housemaids or someone who makes all the dirty work at home for them, and actually I might have one too, I can afford one. But it's not only that, which eats up all my free time.

So, I took my resolution: as soon as I go back to Lyon, I'll start writing my book about Turkey, one hour a day. It can be done, I just have to impose a discipline on myself, I know I can do it. Yes, I know, I have already said the same thing to myself a thousand times, but if I don't say it, I'll never do it, so it's a start. I know I won't be able to write when I work 9 or 11 hours in a day, but I'll try to when I have shorter shifts.

Also because, in all this going through library shelves, I found exactly the book I want to write: The New Turkey by Chris Morris. I know, I know: "if it has already been written, why do you want to do it?". Well, there are reasons: first of all, it's not translated in Italian, as far as I know. And I don't think it's going to be: it was published in 2006, but written in 2005. So, much of what is in there is already old. I realized it fully while reading the introduction, where I found much of what I might have said more or less a year and a half ago. This is another good reason to write a new book: to update the old one.

But the old one can be a good starting point to write the new one, so I bought it, of course. 18.10 euros. I hope it's worth it. I have read a few pages, and I haven't been disappointed so far. Actually, it's excitingly the same style I want to use. And it excites me because, if a BBC correspondent did it, maybe my idea is not so crazy as I feared.