Recommended Reads: All Over The Map by Laura Fraser

Just finished bawling my eyes out on the last few pages of my latest read, All Over The Map by Laura Fraser. I'm being massacred by my book choices lately, I have no idea why but I keep coming upon endings that are untraditional and therefore unexpected. Laura Fraser is an exceptional person, I literally want to know her and drink Barolo together somewhere in Italy I've never been. And she's the perfect companion for that- a wanderlust writer who has been "all over the map" in both a worldly and emotional sense. I first discovered Laura (I'm calling her by first name because having read her two books, I consider her a friend) when I purchased An Italian Affair, her prerequisite memoir to All Over The Map where we are introduced to the Professor and the Italian island of Ischia. Interestingly enough I would later go on a summer abroad program on the same island, sans sexy Frenchman because I already had my sexy Italian in the picture. What can I say about this book other than if you like my blog or my background story, you will love this beyond words. It will take you from San Francisco to Naples to Samoa to San Miguel de Allende to Peru and back again (I've left out numerous other stops in favour of not having to type them all out on my iPad and because you should be intrigued enough to read this by now, Oprah sure was). To the dismay of Massi, I dog-ear my books. Whether as a bookmark or just to note a page or passage I particularly enjoyed. I'll leave you with one of my "dog-eared" passages from All Over The Map:

"I want to rewind, go back to Oaxaca, back to that Mexican garden, where the Professor would tell me in Italian that I'm the love of his life, I should come back to Paris, learn to speak French, and we could spend summers in a little house in southern Italy."

P.S. Laura if you ever read this, let's be BFFs ok?