What should you read to help you learn Italian?

The mistake most learners make is going straight for a book they love in English. It feels motivating for three pages, then every sentence needs a dictionary and the book goes back on the shelf. Reading helps a language stick when you understand most of what is on the page and can guess the rest. Pick books that feel a little easy and you will read ten times more of them.

Start with your level

Language levels are usually described with the Council of Europe's CEFR scale, from A1 and A2 for beginners, through B1 and B2, to C1 and C2. Many Italian graded readers are labelled this way, which saves a lot of guesswork. If you are not sure where you are, open a book at random: if you understand the gist of a page and stumble on only a few words, it is about right.

Beginners (A1 to A2): graded readers

Graded readers are short books written or adapted for learners, with controlled vocabulary, short chapters and usually a glossary and exercises. They are not great literature, and that is fine. Their job is to let you finish a whole book in Italian early on, which does wonders for confidence.

Tips:

• Choose stories you would actually read in English. A detective story or a romance in Rome beats a worthy history of the Renaissance.
• Get the audio version where there is one. Reading while listening ties spelling to sound, which matters in Italian more than you might think.
• Read two books at each level before moving up.

Intermediate (B1 to B2): parallel texts, comics, children's classics

Parallel texts print the Italian on one page and an English translation facing it. Penguin's long-running series includes Short Stories in Italian, edited by Nick Roberts and published in 1999, with stories by writers such as Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Leonardo Sciascia and Antonio Tabucchi. Read the Italian first; only look across when you are truly stuck.

Comics are underrated. Try Topolino, the Italian Disney comic whose current format has been published since 1949 and by Panini Comics since 2013. The pictures carry the meaning, the dialogue is everyday spoken Italian, and you will learn a lot of exclamations nobody puts in a textbook.

Children's classics are ideal because they are written to be read aloud. Gianni Rodari's Favole al telefono, published by Einaudi in 1962, is a collection of very short tales framed as bedtime stories a travelling father tells his daughter over the phone every evening. They are kept short, the book explains, because long calls were expensive. Perfect for one story a night. Il piccolo principe, the Italian translation of The Little Prince, also works well, especially if you already know the story in another language.

Confident readers (B2 and up): short stories before novels

Short stories let you finish something in an evening and start fresh the next day. Calvino's Marcovaldo, first published in 1963, is a good bridge: twenty short stories following a poor labourer through the seasons in a northern industrial city, five cycles of a year. The tone is funny and melancholy, and each story stands alone. See our guide on where to start with Calvino.

After that, choose a short, plain-spoken contemporary novel set somewhere you would like to be. Our page on Ammaniti's I'm Not Scared covers a fast, summery one that many learners reach for.

How to read without drowning

• Do not look up every word. Underline unknown words and look up only the ones that appear three times.
• Read a page aloud. It is slow, and it helps the rhythm and stress patterns settle in.
• Re-read. A second read of a short story at the same level is often more useful than a new, harder one.
• Stop when it stops being pleasant. Reading is the one part of learning a language that should feel like a holiday, not homework.