Today's guest post comes courtesy of Dorah Blume. Her debut novel, Botticelli's Muse has been selected as a 2017 INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist by Foreword Reviews. This prestigious magazine considers as part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers including Dorah's new publishing company Juiceboxartists Press. I asked her to share a quick recollection of her time in Italy when she was nineteen which went on to inspire her writing and her book. 

“Guida della Basilica Papale del Sacro Convento di San Francesco d’Assisi” were the only words I knew when I got off the boat in Venice in August of 1963. I could say them with perfect Italian rhythm and accent, but I didn’t know how to ask for directions to the nearest toilet. My teacher Barry in Boston had given me “private” Italian lessons and had insisted that if only I could repeat the title of the guide book to the papal basilica of the sacred convent of Saint Francis of Assisi without an American accent, I could learn to speak Italian well. I had sold most of my Filene’s Bargain Basement designer clothing for a profit to my wealthy Bennington College classmates in order to pay for my ticket on the Saturnia that sailed for 14 days from NYC to Italy. 
 
I stayed with nuns in a convent for a few days before heading north to Bressanone in the alps for Italian lessons, then soon made my way to Florence in time to start my junior year abroad at the Academy of Fine Arts inside the building where Michelangelo’s statue of David stands today. I was a nineteen-year-old woman eager to study painting and devour Italy.
 
A broadside on the locked door of the school said “sciopero” which meant “strike.” And there was no opening day in sight. I had rented a bicycle to find my way around Florence. Overwhelmed by the number of museums, I hung out at Upim, the local department store, gorged on Italian pastries—the gooiest I could find, and immersed myself in the language by spending afternoons at the movies. I saw Fellini’s 8.5 three times. It was pretty lonely and my Italian was pathetic. At least I had a good accent going for me, but a very limited vocabulary.

I moved to Perugia and enrolled in language classes at The University for Foreigners and lived with an Italian family. By November, I was fluent in the language so I returned to Florence, moved into a pensione a few blocks away from the Accademia, and was determined to give Florence a second chance. Most of my housemates were Italian architecture students. Their friends became my friends. During Christmas break, they took me to their hometown of L’Aquila where I experienced hospitality in a way I had never experienced in the States. I fell in love, not only with one of the architecture students, but with Italy.

Studying under teachers who had no interest or enthusiasm for expressive art, I soon found myself switching to the printmaking studio where I learned the technique of etching. Outside of class, I im­mersed myself in the music of the Italian language, the suede-like splendor of the terra cotta-colored walls, the suffocating streets, and the flesh made stone in the piazze. The city’s artistic pulse flowed through my veins as though I'd lived there before. The Uffizi— home to Botticelli's Primavera — became my cathedral.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that first year in Italy planted invisible seeds of inspiration in me, seeds that did not blossom until my 50s after my creative passions had turned from visual arts to writing. That’s when I conceived, with the help of the Emerson MFA program, my debut novel Botticelli’s Muse.

Written by author, Dorah Blume.

About the Author:
An Italophile since the age of nineteen when she studied painting at Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, Dorah Blume has published short fiction and nonfiction in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for “Hunger for Learning.”  Considering herself a late bloomer, she expanded her artistic reach from visual to the written word in her forties with an MFA in creative writing from Emerson, and has navigated between the two ever since.

As a certified Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) facilitator, Dorah has led Juiceboxartists writing workshops for adults in Greater Boston as well as in Tuscany. She divides her time between Boston and Los Angeles with frequent trips to Italy. If she could possess one superpower, it would be to understand and speak every language on the planet.  

You can read more about Dorah on her official website: dorahblume.com

Botticelli's Muse is available for purchase on Amazon.
​Dorah has also designed three separate adult coloring books with images from the novel that can be purchased on Amazon as well, so click above to check those out!

If you enjoyed this guest post, you may also like to "dare un'occhiata" at these ones:
​Guest Post: How I Followed My Dreams of Becoming a Writer in Rome
Guest Post: My Story with the Italian Language​
​THE ITALY EXPERIENCE: Canadian Expat vs. American Exchange Student

If you books and Italy are what do it for you, check out these posts:
​Book Buzz: Return to Glow by Chandi Wyant
Book in Progress: Italian Ways by Tim Parks
Recommended #Italy Reads: At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell
​Recommended Reads: A Zany Slice of Italy by Ivanka Di Felice ​
​
And finally, if writing intrigues you, read ten very short stories which are now available as a cute collection in my first eBook: This Sweet Life. You can download it for FREE in my store! Or read the included pieces as individual posts:  
​
​Creative Writing: The Butterfly Effect
​Creative Writing: The Letter R (Explicit)
​Creative Writing: Dear Italy (A Love Letter)
Creative Writing: Airport Arrivals
​Creative Writing: Tanqueray and You
​Creative Writing: A Thousand Lives
​Creative Writing: A Sunday Kind of Love
​Creative Writing: Perfect Strangers in Switzerland
​Creative Writing: Rooftops and Rome
​Creative Writing: The Morning After in New York
​Creative Writing: Mulberries in Sicily
​

I cannot stop talking about André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name. It's one of those books that I actually mourn having read because all I really want is to go back in time and be a virgin to this spectacular love story again. I felt like I rushed it, much like a first time, racing breathless to the ending without knowing that it would be over far too soon. Read this book. If you're reading this post and you haven't read this book and you don't own it yet, stop what you're doing (I won't be offended in the least) and go buy it. I'm not even sure how to begin to describe this book for those of you living under a rock who haven't heard of the Oscar-nominated film based on it. It's an injustice to simply label it as a "coming-of-age" piece, just as it is an injustice to call it a "universal love story", I hate both of those references but I loved this book and I read it in gulps at first and then in teeny tiny sips towards the end. Set during one hot summer on the Ligurian coast, Call Me By Your Name tells the tale of a bilingual, bicultural teenager, Elio, as he grapples with the laws of attraction in a sleepy Italian town upon the arrival of an annual summer student. The writing is well-suited to the setting, it’s drawn-out and languorous, much like the Italian summers that I know too well. The smattering of the two languages, Italian and English, here and there make this book feel like it was written just for me.

“Everyone goes through a period of Traviamento - when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other via. Dante himself did. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long.”

As a learning strategy, I often try to have at least one book in Italian on the go at any given time. During this last month, while reading Call Me By Your Name, my Italian book was slightly more light-hearted: Tutte Le Volte Che Ho Scritto Ti Amo (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before) by Jenny Han. A teen romance not to be underrated, it would make for fantastic beach reading if you’re already planning your summer vacation. Lara Jean is sixteen and navigating her first loves with tact and prose by swooning and falling and then forgetting about all the boys she’s loved by writing them a sort of goodbye letter which she places into a hat box and promptly forgets about.  That is, until somehow the letters get mailed to all those boys by accident and her tranquil existence is turned upside-down. While this book lacks the intensity of Call Me By Your Name, Lara Jean is two years younger than the former’s protagonist, Elio, and it’s reasonable to read about her first kisses with a touch more innocence than you’ll encounter in my first recommendation. She speaks, however, in wise ways with regards to her mother’s death and Han manages to inject wisdom beyond her sixteen years in passages such as this one:

“When someone's been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it's like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you're just clutching air and grit. That's why you can't save it all up like that. Because by the time you finally see each other, you're catching up only on the big things, because it's too much bother to tell about the little things. But the little things are what make up life.”

The third book I’ve read is the book that some say brought Joan Didion to the living rooms of the masses, including myself. Despite the fact that Didion is a true and undisputed American literary legend, her earlier work and journalism pieces flew by the wayside for so many of us born into the era of the Kindle. The Year of Magical Thinking chronicles the year following the unexpected and sudden death of her husband, John Dunne, the other half of America’s most beloved literary couple who made a name for themselves on both the East and West Coast of the country as writers and screenwriters. They essentially lived the dream and shared a partnership that seems to exist only in fiction novels that they never penned themselves. They were too realistic to do that.  Didion was preparing dinner for her husband when he went into cardiac arrest while on his second whisky of the night. What comes after is a stunning recollection of Didion’s trudge through the deepest depths of that year, a marked portrayal of grief. Immersed in it, in her continual thoughts about Dunne, the replaying of the events leading up to his death, the “what ifs”, the scripting of the parallel life we all wish we had access to, she becomes you or me, she becomes all of us as we face the experience of mortality.  An experience that I have of recent, taken a crash course in and therefore found immense comfort in Didion’s words on paper:

“We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” 

Would love to know if any of you have read these and what your opinions were of them. Let me know in the comments as well as what your "Recommended Read" is at the moment. Happy reading! xo

Hello from your fellow voracious expat read, moi! Sometimes I scare myself with how many books I can devour in such a short time, I wonder if there's actually a pathological disorder that involves excessive reading. If you know of it, tell me in the comments. This month, I read these four books which you see above (in addition to a handful of others which I'll save for a later date). Be forewarned, the underlying theme between the books is evident, as I mentioned in a previous post, I'm having a memoir moment. I cannot seem to satiate my need to stand next to the grief of others, for whatever reason, shoulder to shoulder, these stories, these women, strengthen my will to push forward in light of a loss. They are all a testament to the human condition, to facing and overcoming adversity, and to learning to live again. 

Milk and Honey is a book of poems written by Instagram-famous Rupi Kaur, you might remember her now-iconic period leak post that, when removed by the site, launched a thousand opinions and had Kaur respond with, “I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak.”  How right you are Ms. Kaur, I'm proud to call you a compatriot. Milk and Honey needs to be read by all females of our generation for it contains words that paint pictures of a society all too accustomed with turning a blind eye to the themes of violence against women, emotional and physical abuse, sexuality, yet is also an homage to the audacity of the female spirit. 

Next up (top right) is the memoir Beyond the High Blue Air by Lu Spinney. The courageous Spinney tells the story of her beloved son Miles who is left in a minimally-conscious state after a snowboarding accident in Austria and in doing so, tackles some of the most difficult questions that most of us never have to face, including what makes life worth living and what we are willing to do for the people we love in the most tragic of circumstances. I fell in love a little with Miles, I couldn't stop thinking about him, his dark hair, and Spinney's final words in the book: Go for it Miles. Go for it. That should be the voice in all of our heads in front of every risk and every adventure in this life, irreverent towards fear with an insatiable appetite, devouring every last moment given to us. 

Moving to the bottom left, we have Cory Taylor’s memoir Dying, completed just weeks before her death from cancer in July 2016. Taylor was a novelist and screenwriter and her love of the written word comes across in this recollection of her youth, her fears, and her hopes for the family she knew she would soon leave behind. There are musings of euthanasia, more than musings in truth, as Taylor opens the book discussing the lethal drug she has purchased “in case” from a supplier in China. She doesn’t shy away from the taboo, the book a welcome respite for those of us who always wanted to ask the questions but never had the chance. She exudes a kind of strength and tenacity that makes me know that dying took on a worthy adversary in her. 

Last but certainly not least is All at Sea. I didn’t know this before, but the nautical term “all at sea” refers to a state of disorder and confusion, a state that English journalist Decca Aitkenhead was sure to have found herself navigating after the sudden death of her partner, Tony, during a family vacation in Jamaica. Tony Wilkinson drowned saving one of their sons who had wandered into the water and after handing him off to safety, was overpowered by the underlying current. Her memoir takes us through the disintegration of her first marriage and describes the immense opposition she faced when following her heart upon meeting Tony, who was at the time, involved in drug trafficking and was a user himself. She documents their unlikely rise together, hers in the world of journalism and his from the streets to college classrooms and then back to the streets where he worked with at-risk youth. Theirs is a dedication to kindred spirits everywhere.

Would love to know if any of you have read these! Let me know in the comments. You can also buy each book by ​clicking on the book covers above OR by scrolling down, you'll see the Amazon links below! If you do, as an Amazon affiliate, I will receive a small percentage and every little bit helps keep this blog running. 

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to "dare un'occhiata" at these ones:
Book Buzz: Return to Glow by Chandi Wyant
​Book in Progress: When in French by Lauren Collins​
Book in Progress: Italian Ways by Tim Parks
Book in Progress: Finding Me in France by Bobbi French ​
​Recommended Reads: The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard
Recommended Reads: Come Away With Me by Karma Brown 
Recommended #Italy Reads: At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell
​Recommended Reads: A Zany Slice of Italy by Ivanka Di Felice ​
Recommended ITALIAN Reads: Meglio Soffrire Che Mettere In Un Ripostiglio Il Cuore di Susanna 

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I’ve always had a particular love for memoirs. This love started out with travel memoirs. They spoke to me, to my longing for adventure in parts unknown. The voices of like-minded vagabonds regaled me with stories of steamy, Argentine kisses in the inky Buenos Aires night, of the gentle flutter of Tibetan prayer flags, a prayer sent out to the world with every rush of air. I hoarded every book written about Italy and read them incessantly until the spines broke and pages would detach and I would gingerly push them back onto the hardened glue while at the same time, reveling in this visible, tangible evidence of love. For some, like my husband, a tattered book is more heartbreaking than anything, but it doesn’t stop me from putting my most-adored books through some kind of contortionist audition every time I read one. 
 
Since moving to Italy, I’ve had to give up this physical adoration if I want to read an English book in its original version. I almost exclusively read English authors on my Kindle, something I rebelled against for years and years. In fact, after receiving one as a gift, I left it dusty and rejected in a drawer until I arrived at sheer desperation at not being able to walk into a bookstore and find what I wanted. This introduction to my post is getting slightly superfluous. I started talking about my penchant for memoirs because as of late, since my father’s passing, I’ve gravitated to cancer memoirs. My Kindle Library, at first glance, might cause the average person to question my well-being. It looks suspiciously like I’m obsessed with reading about cancer. From “The Emperor of All Maladies” to “Being Mortal”, I’ve read a decent selection of everything recent and talked-about related to cancer and dying. Actually, I would like to amend that last statement- cancer and LIVING. The latest which has been Joyce Maynard’s memoir: The Best of Us.
 
In what can only seem like a cruel twist of fate, writer Joyce Maynard meets, falls in love with, and marries a remarkable man, Jim, a San Francisco lawyer, photographer, and musician, only to be faced with his pancreatic cancer diagnosis just after their one-year wedding anniversary. One might be tempted to read this with pity, with that look that people give you, that I know so well now. You might want to call their story a tragedy even. But you would be wrong. Pity and tragedy are really nouns that belong to someone else, much like Lucy Goddard Kalanithi said about her late husband Paul, writer of “When Breath Becomes Air”: what happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy. In a similar manner, Joyce recollects their brightest and darkest moments over the nineteen months that Jim lived with pancreatic cancer, so often considered a death sentence the moment it’s uttered from an oncologist’s lips. One of the lines I loved most was “if only you could learn the lessons of cancer without having cancer”. Truer words have never been spoken. Because what rises out of the ashes of this story is the reminder to live joyfully. Maynard writes with the delicate and eloquent bluntness that seems to come out of almost everyone touched by cancer, she hides nothing, not even her despair at losing parts of herself and her own life while supporting her husband during his final days.  I have read that she received quite a lot of backlash for these sentiments which I find difficult to understand. Cancer is all-enveloping and all-consuming, and it consumes not only the person with the tumor, but takes with it, wives, husbands, children, and friends. Yet what Maynard demonstrates is that those of us left behind, for the time being, can continue living. Must continue living. And she reminds us that we can always do it better to honor the experience of loss by being kinder, by being more patient, and by making time for the things that we love. 

(This is just a screenshot of a chapter in the book, as seen on my computer screen. I was quite tickled pink by Jim's inclusion of "Italy, anywhere" on his list of Places I Want to Go with Joyce. Good man.)

Let me know what your "Recommended Read" is at the moment in the comments below. Have you read "The Best of Us" by Joyce Maynard? If you have, let me know your thoughts as well!

​Happy reading! xo
​
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to "dare un'occhiata" at these ones:
Book Buzz: Return to Glow by Chandi Wyant
​Book in Progress: When in French by Lauren Collins​
Book in Progress: Italian Ways by Tim Parks
Book in Progress: Finding Me in France by Bobbi French ​
Recommended Reads: Come Away With Me by Karma Brown 
Recommended #Italy Reads: At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell
​Recommended Reads: A Zany Slice of Italy by Ivanka Di Felice ​
Recommended ITALIAN Reads: Meglio Soffrire Che Mettere In Un Ripostiglio Il Cuore di Susanna Casciani

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You may wonder why I even bother to write these posts titled “Book in Progress” but then I suppose if you have to wonder then you’re not really as passionate about books as I am. I constantly want to know what people are reading. That’s probably my most second most beloved interrogative: what are you reading right now? My first is probably something like: what are we eating today? That’s the reason I started this series, to satisfy the curious book lover like myself.  So currently folks, I’m reading “When in French” by Lauren Collins. Originally a journalist for the New Yorker, Lauren finds herself falling in love with an aptly named Frenchman named Olivier (anyone else inappropriately imagining a smoldering Olivier Martinez and Diane Lane in a bathroom right now?  Plus, complete side note, why is Diane Lane in all of my daydreams? She’s there in Tuscany, she’s there with the sexy Frenchman…!).  I’ve barely made it through the first chapter, my hardcover arrived today and my inner nerd already loves that the chapter names are verb tenses- The Past Perfect is Chapter One and The Subjunctive is Chapter Six. Here’s a little teaser from the book sleeve:
 
“Talking to you in English,” he said, “is like touching you with gloves.”
 
Ok, now picture Olivier Martinez (aka Paul in “Unfaithful”) saying that and it just might be the most sexy sentence ever uttered. I’m not kidding. I love languages, I love the idea of bilingual relationships, especially when both people have learnt each other's language, and so this quote literally gives me butterflies. I won’t start on a commentary about love and languages here on this post, I’ll keep it on the backburner for a future one, suffice to say that in our most intimate moments, we tend to revert to our mothertongue and oh, what a difference it makes when we can use it from the heart and be understood by our significant other! While I’ve no idea yet as to what depth this book will discuss the implications of language on our lives, I can already say that I am deeply invested in this conversation on a personal level, having learned Italian after being seduced by my own "Olivier" and I can also say that the language continues to seduce me to this day. 

Let me know what your "book in progress" is at the moment in the comments below. Have you read "When in French" by Lauren Collins? If you have, let me know your thoughts as well!

​Happy reading! xo

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to "dare un'occhiata" at these ones:
​
​Book in Progress: Italian Ways by Tim Parks
Book in Progress: Finding Me in France by Bobbi French ​
Recommended Reads: Come Away With Me by Karma Brown 
Recommended #Italy Reads: At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell
​Recommended Reads: A Zany Slice of Italy by Ivanka Di Felice ​

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If you've managed to click on all my blog Categories, you'll have seen there's a section called Recommended Books and you'll have realized I'm a rather obsessive reader. I've owned a Kobo and two Kindles, and am infamously known for having shipped my entire library overseas from Canada to Italy. There are still stacks and stacks leftover at my parents' home, waiting to make their way back to me, just ask my mother. Lately, I've been "restricting" (that sounds negative and it's not at all a bad thing) my reading to Italian books. This is two-fold: one, it's a way to continue studying Italian and learn new vocabulary. I find that reading helps me remember "how things are said". It's different from writing out grammar sentences because a sentence can be grammatically correct, just like English, but sound completely awful, inorganic, and unnatural. Instead, reading helps me visualize the organic structure of sentences as well as the extent of creative ease and liberty that can go into Italian. The most recent book that I finished is "Meglio soffrire che mettere in un ripostiglio il cuore" written by Susanna Casciani. 

This is the first book I've read by this author and I found it particularly poignant. It is essentially a first--person account of the end of a relationship. I know that sounds horribly sad but I promise that it is surprisingly uplifting as well because it's a universal theme that most people can relate to, most of us have had a similar experience at some point in our past and while the memory of loss can be melancholic, the fact that we rise up again is such a contrasting joy. Sometimes, languages lend themselves to certain emotions. Italian is the perfect language to tell this story. I feel like a translated version in English would not be the same just as an Italian is so much more adept at pouring out his heart compared to an Englishman. The culture is to blame for some of this, but the language for the rest. Below is a snapshot of an excerpt from the end of one of the chapters, isn’t it beautiful? ​
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I'm always on the lookout for the best and brightest new books about Italy and I have a soft spot for memoirs. That's why I am so excited to present Chandi Wyant's first book, Return to Glow, where we will be able to trek alongside her as she journeys the spiritual Via Francigena- a pilgrimage walk most recently talked about in the New York Time's Travel article: On the Via Francigena in Tuscany, Monasteries and Fellowship.  Chandi is a past "colleague" of mine, being that we were both featured as contributing authors in the exapt anthology Once Upon an Expat and are kindred spirits in our love of Italy. The official launch date for Return to Glow will be April 2nd, 2017 so keep an eye out for it on Amazon where it will be available for purchase! I've included the summary below and a bit about the author, for more information, check out the website for Return to Glow. 

Book Summary: 
In her early forties, Chandi Wyant’s world implodes in the wake of a divorce and traumatic illness. Determined to embrace life by following her heart, she sets out on Italy’s historic pilgrimage route, the Via Francigena, to walk for forty days to Rome.

Weakened by her recent illness, she walks over the Apennines, through the valleys of Tuscany, and beside busy highways on her 425-kilometer trek equipped with a nineteen-pound pack, two journals, and three pens.

Return to Glow chronicles this journey that is both profoundly spiritual and ruggedly adventuresome. As Chandi traverses this ancient pilgrim’s route, she rediscovers awe in the splendor of the Italian countryside and finds sustenance and comfort from surprising sources. Drawing on her profession as a college history instructor, she gracefully weaves in relevant anecdotes, melding past and present in this odyssey toward her soul.

This delightful, transporting tale awakens the senses while inviting readers to discover their own inner glow by letting go of fixed expectations, choosing courage over comfort, and following their heart.
​

About Chandi Wyant
A world traveler, photographer, writer and historian, Chandi Wyant has lived in Qatar, India, Italy, Switzerland and England, and has been returning to Italy with unremitting passion since she first lived there at age twenty. She holds a Masters degree in Florentine Renaissance history and is the former head of Sogni Italiani, an events planning firm specializing in weddings, vow renewals, and honeymoons in Italy.  The manuscript of her memoir, Return to Glow (2017), won third place in the 2015 National Association of Memoir contest.

When she’s not dreaming in Italian, she can be found teaching history and writing about travel for the Huffington Post and her blog, Paradise of Exiles.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:
Recommended Reads: A Zany Slice of Italy by Ivanka Di Felice
​Recommended #Italy Reads: At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell
​Book in Progress: Finding Me in France by Bobbi French 
Book in Progress: Italian Ways by Tim Parks

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I'm on Day 4 of the Jasmine and Jhumpa Project, it's a far cry from a year's worth of writing but breaking it down into little bite-size bits of Italian practice is actually quite palatable, dare I say, enjoyable. If you're studying or have studied Italian in the past, I invite you to join me in doing 365 days of writing! How fun if it became a group endeavor, like book club...! You could write right on my site: http://thejasmineandjhumpaproject.weebly.com/blog/day-4 or even make your own. Anyways, the only point of this post was because I found this super cute photo on Mindy Kaling's Twitter essentially posing with a book which is essentially my signature move. Thought I was the only one that took selfies with books like this, apparently was wrong. 

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I haven't much to say about this book yet as I've barely turned the first few pages, however there was already an excerpt that I wanted to share from the prologue. These few lines transported me to my backpacking days when I was younger, no one I knew was married, and Europe was a wide-open play place filled with cheap wine and hostel breakfasts that tasted like heaven after staying up dancing the night away in bars with heinous, tacky names like Lux. Ok, I may still harbor pent-up anger towards that club in Lisbon that wouldn't let our 'backpackers-in-heels'-awesome-selves in unless we gave the doorman 200 Euros each. How could he ask such a thing? That was my food money (Portuguese custard tarts are in fact perfect for breakfast, lunch, and dinner thank you very much). Anyways, here is that excerpt I mentioned before going on a trip down memory lane: 

"A few days later, on the platform at Firenze Santa Maria Novella, I bought a flask of Chianti with two German boys, the kind of wine they sell in bellied bottles with straw aprons, and after no more than a couple of swigs passed out, to wake up in my vomit three hours later in the corridor of an evening Espresso to Rome. Those were the days..." - Tim Parks 

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Do you ever feel so compelled by a book that you're reading that you can't wait until it's done to start telling the world about it? To tell the full truth, I've felt this way about the last handful or so of books I've read but perhaps none so much as this current read: Finding Me in France. I've not made it past the first several pages without having a literal 'literary moment', one of those instances where your subconscious just goes 'wow!' and you re-read a passage a few times to convince your brain that these are someone else's words and not your own. Here's where it was for me (this is from page 11 of the book): 

" When Neil and I first went to Italy in 2007, I was completely undone by it all- the cuisine, the history and the pace of life. But for me it was something deeper than the museums and cathedrals. I knew that I belonged in Europe. I was convinced that I had been living someone else's life and that every woman I saw in Europe was living mine. I knew I needed to return as soon as I could. We came home, took Italian lessons, bought Italian cookbooks and fantasized constantly about living la dolce vita someday." 

The bolded part especially, I swear if I had the patience to sift through my old travel journals (black, dusty, perfectly-tattered Moleskines because what else?), I would find a version of this exact sentiment. And though I don't want to give France credit for fear of retaliation from every Italian person I know, it was actually in Paris that I first knew I belonged in Europe. So I have to say a quick 'grazie' to France because in a way, many, many years ago, I also found myself there. And then I found my dolce vita. 

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