Set in 1944, after the war the British occupy Naples and things are not any better. Food is scarce and the economy isn’t moving forward with people struggling to meet ends. Soon there is an increasing number of Bristish soldiers applying to marry local Italian women.
Captain James Gould is appointed to discourage this. He is dubbed as ‘the wedding officer’ by the locals. Ironically he falls for a young widow who is a fabulous cook.
What you can expect:
The Wedding Officer is a perfect blend of history, romance and a lot Italian cooking. Italy and food – your weekend can’t get any better.
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Birth of Venus begins with the death of a nun and as her habit is stripped off, a particularly provocative tattoo is found. Thus we are taken on a journey when this mysterious nun was a fifteen year Alessandra Cecchi.
Set in the Renaissance Florence that is being suppressed by the religious and political forces, Alessandra is married off to an older man but her attraction to art and a particular artist survives the tumultuous time.
What you can expect:
What is more Italian than painting and painters? Add a bit of renaissance to the mix and you will love the suspense filled romance.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
If you are into best sellers this one is for you. Set in 1950s, the book follows the friendship of Elena and Lila right from the childhood to their adult life. Lila is the more beautiful, smarter, Elena is understandably jealous but she is the one who escapes their life through education.
What you can expect:
Read about the dirt poor Naples and the lovely friendship and rivalry between two girls.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The story revolves around four major characters a nurse, a maimed thief, a bomb disposal expert and the nameless English patient just after the World War II. This non linear story takes us through war, love, culture and mostly memories.
What you can expect:
This Booker Prize winning book is all you need to read this week. Or better catch the movie, which is surprisingly does justice to the book.
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career.
But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.
In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year.
Breathing Room by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
A fallen self help author who is trying to restore her reputation while hiding away under the Tuscan sun until she meets a silver screen star is vacationing in Italy.
With the townspeople trying to driver her away and the guy who wouldn’t leave her alone, she definitely doesn’t have a breathing room.
What you can expect:
A perfect romantic comedy for a lazy afternoon set in Tuscany.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
When Oliver spends his summer in Italy with his Professor Perlman, the professor’s son Elio begins to fall for him.The two young men have so much in common yet they cannot fathom the reason for their attractions. The six weeks’ of powerful romance is dreamy, seductive and the prose is beautiful and lyrical.
What you can expect:
This bittersweet coming of age romance is perfect if you are looking for YA read set in Riveria.
The Lost Art of Second Chances by Courtney Hunt
When Lucy Parker’s eccentric grandmother dies, Lucy must return a beloved painting to a mysterious man in Italy, leading her on a journey to discover family secrets, secrets buried in the chaotic aftermath of World War II.
Lucy’s childhood best friend, estate lawyer Jack Hamilton, agrees to accompany her, opening up a opportunity for them to find their second chance at love. Will they find it? From a tiny town in Massachusetts to the rolling hills of Tuscany, never-told family secrets unfurl in The Lost Art of Second Chances.
What you can expect:
This heartbreaking love story set in WW II is perfect if you are a sucker for happily ever afters.
Classics set in Italy
Where Angels Fear To Tread, by E.M. Forster
When a young English widow takes off on the grand tour and along the way marries a penniless Italian, her in-laws are not amused. That the marriage should fail and poor Lilia die tragically are only to be expected.
But that Lilia should have had a baby — and that the baby should be raised as an Italian! — are matters requiring immediate correction by Philip Herriton, his dour sister Harriet, and their well-meaning friend Miss Abbott.
A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed.
The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim
The women at the center of The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon.
The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy. Now, if the same transformation can be worked on their husbands and lovers, the enchantment will be complete.
A Room With A View, by E.M. Forster
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance.
Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George.
Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?
Young Adults books set in Italy
The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
Two orphaned children are on the run, hiding among the crumbling canals and misty alleyways of the city of Venice.
Befriended by a gang of street children and their mysterious leader, the Thief Lord, they shelter in an old, disused cinema. On their trail is a bungling detective, obsessed with disguises and the health of his pet tortoises.
But a greater threat to the boys’ new-found freedom is something from a forgotten past – a beautiful magical treasure with the power to spin time itself.
The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark
It is 1498, the dawn of the Renaissance, and Venice teems with rumors about an ancient book that holds the secret to unimaginable power. It is an alchemist’s dream, with recipes for gold, immortality, and undying love. But while those who seek the book will stop at nothing to get it, those who know will die to protect it.
As a storm of intrigue and desire circles the republic that grew from the sea, Luciano, a penniless orphan with a quick wit and an even faster hand, is plucked up by an illustrious chef and hired, for reasons he cannot yet begin to understand, as an apprentice in the palace kitchen.
There, in the lavish home of the most powerful man in Venice, he is initiated into the chef’s rich and aromatic world, with all its seductive ingredients and secrets. It is not long before Luciano is caught up in the madness.
What he discovers will swing open the shutters of his mind, inflame his deepest desires, and leave an indelible mark on his soul.
What you can expect:
A luminous and seductive novel, it is, at its heart, a high-spirited tribute to the fruits of knowledge and the extraordinary power of those who hold its key.
Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch
Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years?
All Lina wants to do is get back home.
But then she is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries.
A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything she knew about her mother, her father—and even herself.
What you can expect:
People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more
The Eternal City by Paula Morris
Laura Martin is visiting Rome on a class trip, and she’s entranced by the majestic Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon. . . . Everything in this city seems magical.
That is, until the magic seems to turn very dark.
Suddenly, statues of Cupid and ancient works of art come to life before her eyes. Earthquakes rumble and a cloud of ash forms in the sky. A dark-eyed boy with wings on his heels appears and gives her a message. Laura soon realizes she is at the center of a brewing battle — a battle between the gods and goddesses, one that will shake modern-day Rome to its core.
Only she and her group of friends can truly unravel the mystery behind what is happening. As tensions mount and secret identities are revealed, Laura must rely on her own inner strength to face up to what may be a fight for her life.
What you can expect:
Acclaimed author Paula Morris brings the ancient world to vivid life in this unstoppable tale of friendship, love, and the power of the past.
Have you read any of these books? Did these books take you all over Italy virtually? Share with me your favorite books set in Italy. Let us talk more.
Of course we are going to judge a book by its covers. Let us be honest, does any one follow that proverb in its literal sense. More often than not, it works so well. So well that they tell us off some books.
I am sure you have seen some interesting covers on books. Who has not?
Here I am presenting some covers that have freaked me out and go WTF, recently.
Let us get on with it, shall we?
Disclaimer: This post is intended for fun and not intended to hurt anyone. If it did, I am sorry and it was purely unintentional.
Did he cut her head with the axe? If so, shouldn’t the blood mark be on the sharper side? Where are her eye balls?
So many questions!
Where did they find these weird looking kids? And if this is what feelings make us look like, please let us destroy them!
What animal is that? And why is it an Australian art?
Why is she having a crocodile head and why is it titled ‘carnivore romance’? Is it a romance between the crocodile and the red dress wearing, poker playing lady? And what kinda romance ends up with their bodies morphing into one?
Curiosity got ahead of me and I checked the author on Amazon and guess what? All her covers have an animal head human body combo!! Wut?
I get this one. Almost.
Thelma and her fiance are in love. Hint: Silhouette image And he has a pet snake, also pictured.
But what is that weird white thing with syringe or pen or dagger thing in its hands?
What is in that cupcake? Why are they both scared of it? And does she have an Adam’s apple or is it just me?
Did they just show us a literal balance to indicate the pH balance? And it sure makes me think it is a spiritual thing, rather than science-y.
I. am. not. even. gonna. attempt.
Did you like these covers? Which is your favorite? Should I make another list with such covers? Do you have a cover that weirded you out? Let us chat.
As many other bookworms I know I started obsessing about books right from my childhood. I can not remember how and when I started reading books in English, and as it is not my mother tongue the books that were available at home were very limited. This meant I had to make do with books that my much much older cousins had on their shelves.
But this also meant I never got to read books that were meant to be as a middle grader or a teen. I know it is not a big deal and I may have not lost much. That is what I thought until I read a few of those middle grader books that everyone loved but me.
Five Books I Wish I Had Read As A Middle Grader
Let us talk about some of those books, shall we?
5. A Wrinkle in time by Madeleine L’Engle
I didn’t read this book until I turned 27, and that might be the reason that I didn’t enjoy it at all. I kinda tried to ignore the strong religious undertone and even then the plot was kinda over simplified, character super unrelatable and dialogue repetitive.
4. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
When I started this book I never knew it was a middle grader book. Soon I was sucked into the period trouble and bigger bust goal of the twelve year old Margaret. I liked her relationship with God, but I was sad that I was not able to connect with the characters, again may be due to the age difference.
3. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
I am yet to find a reader saying they don’t like this one. I had to read this before I could watch the Netflix version starred by Neil Harris Patrick. In fact I didn’t even know about the book before I saw the ad for the show. Of course, I liked it but it was obvious that I was not among the target audience. I loved the show though.
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
I was probably 25 and I enjoyed it enough to continue reading the series. I didn’t dislike it, rather it seemed to be again repetitive and sorta preachy. And that seems to be the theme for all the books of that age, I guess. Again I might have loved it if and when I was 8 – 10 years.
(Does anyone else think the Netflix version is too sad and less endearing?)
1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Oh I love Little Women and I am not gonna complain about it. Except for the fact that if I had met the March sisters especially Jo and Laurie when I were a pre teen, they would have been my heroes. Well that didn’t happen and I hate that I missed it.
I am kinda sure I would have loved these book if I read them when I was supposed to have read them. While I didn’t hate them, I could not fall in love with them and that maybe attributed to my ‘older’ age. Sigh. Well, I tried right?
Do you have any such regrets related to your reading choices? When did you start reading? Tell me some books that you missed reading when you were younger and did you regret reading them now? Let us chat.
As a liberal bookworm, it is quite natural for me to have an affinity towards banned books (not banning books) and collecting quotes from banned books. Here are some that I love and cherish.
Banned Book Week
The American Library Association celebrates the Banned Book week 2018 between September 23 to 29. Of course everyone knows that, it has been the talk of the book blogger world for the past few weeks. Why am I, someone who doesn’t live in the USA , posting about it, right?
I am an Indian, who lives at Dubai and I think banning books are more relevant to me than anyone else. In India books get banned for the weirdest reasons and as a country that has just decriminalized same sex relationship mere days ago, it may not be really surprising. More often than not, random books get challenged for religious reason, so much for being a secular country.
So my enthusiasm to give a voice against banning of books and the banned book week is quite understandable.
TEN QUOTES FROM BANNED BOOKS
I am sharing the quotes I love from the books that were banned in any given point of time in the USA. Let us get on with it.
they say that time heals all things, they say you can always forget; but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my heart strings yet!
― George Orwell, 1984
I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice.
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
I can’t change where I come from or what I’ve been through, so why should I be ashamed of what makes me, me?
There was a time when I was not particularly interested in reading first person narratives and drop the books like it was infected if I find an ‘I’ in an active voice sentence in the first paragraph. That was a long time ago when I was about 8-10 years old. But then, I started trusting the first person narrators and even liking a few a lot – until I came across an unreliable narrator.
An unreliable narrator shatters the reader’s trust by contradicting themselves or misrepresenting the facts or even outright lying. Well, they can be doing that out of naivete or guilt. That is for the readers to find and that is exactly why I started looking out for such characters.
I can not recall the first time I read a book with an unreliable narrator but as I grew I no doubt I started loving them. I have read more books with an unreliable narrator in the past three years than all the years before then combined. So here I am presenting with my top ten narrators that all of us have come to love, in no particular order.
My Top Ten Unreliable Narrators
10) Humbert Humbert, Lolita
Humbert Humbert is the first character that pops up on any reader’s mind when anyone says unreliable narrator and correctly so. Humbert Humbert fancies under age girls and he falls for the 12 year old Lolita. He even marries and kills her mother (I don’t think that is a spoiler) just to be with his step daughter.
As if that is not enough to dislike him, he is an unreliable narrator as well. He not only tries to justify his actions, but also tries to convince the reader of the same through flattery. He constantly contradicts himself and makes outrageous promises both to his ward and the reader.
9) Rachel, The Girl on the Train
Rachel’s life is filled with lies, mistrust, depression and alcohol induced blackouts. Sh would live in her past, her dreams or at her drunk state, but her real life. When she suspects a foul play nobody wants to believer, unsurprisingly.
Her obsession with her unknown people and her ex alike add up to her ‘craziness’. What makes Rachel a great unreliable narrator is the fact that she means well, at least most of the times.
8) Pat Peoples, The Silver Linings Playbook
Pat Peoples has just been let out of psych ward and has lots of repressed memories as well. He is emotionally immature and has no concept of negativity.
He does not remember why he is divorced and is hoping that ex will take him back if he proves himself to be good. He is proof that crazy attracts crazy. And to things make worse, Pat is the worst because he spoils the ending of many classic books. He is definitely one of those unreliable narrators.
7) Jack, Room
Five year old Jack has never been out of a shed, where his father had him and his mother trapped even before he was born. But now he is out of his confinement and experiences world for the first time.
With the limited experiences that he has had, he narrates everything as he sees, which may or not be true. It opens the chance for the readers to interpret the events. With the naivete of a young boy’s eyes, Jack thus becomes a classic unreliable narrator.
6) Unnamed narrator, Fight Club
I know I cannot proceed with the list of unreliable narrators without adding Jack from Fight Club. If reading Chuck’s books were difficult his unnamed characters make the reading more difficult and keep it exciting.
After all that Tyler Durden put our narrator through, the narrartor is not able to prove it was Tyler who caused the Mayhem. He spends a quarter of the book trying to do just that and proving him more and more unreliable as time passes, even to us – until the final reveal.
5) Charlie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Charlie, a freshman in high school, narrates the story in the form of letters to his ‘friend’ and he is taken in by seniors under their wings. He is over emotional yet detached from life as such.
While the story is narrated by him, he blacks out often and has lots of repressed memories making him a perfect choice for unreliable narrator.
4) Nick and Amy Dunne, Gone Girl
I love Gone girl but the two manipulative leads Nick and Amy Dunne made me wonder if everyone around me was lying.
We start by hating Nick and his secrets (and misrepresentations and lies) and want to protect the innocent little Amy, only to find that she is more unreliable and everything we heard from her was a lie as well. If you can read only one book of this list, Gone Girl would be my pick.
Another one from Gillian Flynn (if you can’t tell, she is one of my favorite authors) on the list. Her other books the Grown up and Sharp Objects have unreliable narrators too!
Twenty five years ago, 7 years old Libby Day testifies against her 15 years old brother Ben, for the massacre of their family – their mother and two younger sisters. Ben is convicted for life, partially on Libby’s testimony and partially on the evidences.
Libby is mentally stunted and doesn’t want to remember anything from the day of murders. And just not that, she is selfish, lives on trust fund and would do anything to get money without working – even trying to revisit her past. Well, that is my favorite kinda narrator – totally unreliable.
Alias Grace is one of my best reads of the year and its Netflix adaptation is a huge hit as well. The true crime story based on the 16 years imprisonment of Grace Marks for double homicide of his employer and fellow worker.
While her co-conspirator was hung in public, Grace was sent off the mental asylum for years. In the fictionalized version a psychiatrist tries to see through the web of deception and manipulation spun around and by her to set free. With the number of versions of the event and her own mental status, Grace is definitely one of the top contenders for the best unreliable narrators.
1) Piscine ‘Pi’ Patel, Life of Pi
Pi crosses the mighty ocean alone in a raft except for the company of a man eating mammal, Richard Parker, a tiger. The narrative of the exhaustive 7 month journey makes one wonder how much is true and how much was just a cope up mechanism.
To make matters worse (or better) Pi leaves it to the reader to decide which version one wants to believe in at the end making us doubt everything we just read. No wonder he is on my list of narrators who are unreliable.
Do you like unreliable narrations? Who are your favorite unreliable narrators? Do I have them on my list? Let us chat.
I rarely gush books. Okay, that is a lie. But I could say the number of books that I hold close to my heart are few and they are special. One of such books is And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hossieni. You can read my raving review about the book here and when you return I still wouldn’t have done fangirling about the writer. There is something so simple and realistic in his writing that never leaves me unmoved.
I recently listened to an old interview of his a short while ago and I had to revisit some of my favorite passages from his books. I thought I will share some of the quotes I love from And the Mountains Echoed. I think these quotes will make it worthwhile even if I decide to re-read And the Mountains Echoed for the third time. So let us get on with it shall we?
1) he didn’t understand why a wave of something, something like the tail end of a sad dream, always swept through him whenever he heard the jingling, surprising him each time like an unexpected gust of wind. But then it passed, as all things do. It passed.
2) Kabul is … A thousand tragedies per square mile.
3) Parwana feels herself standing on the brink of telling her everything, telling Masooma how wrong she is, how little she knows the sister with whom she shared the womb, how for years now Parwana’s life has been one long unspoken apology. But to what end? Her own relief once again at Masooma’s expense? She bites down the words. She has inflicted enough pain on her sister.
4) A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.
5) She was an extraordinary woman, and I went to bed that night feeling like I was perhaps more than ordinary myself. This was the effect she had on me.
6) I remember that when my parents fought, they did not stop until a clear victor had been declared. It was their way of sealing off unpleasantness, to caulk it with a verdict, keep it from leaking into the normalcy of the next day. Not so with the Wahdatis. Their fights didn’t so much end as dissipate, like a drop of ink in a bowl of water, with a residual taint that lingered.
7) The net effect is that she has made me feel vaguely reprimanded and, what’s more, deserving of it, guilty of wrongs unspoken, offenses I’ve never been formally charged with.
8) a nagging doubt begins to set in. A faint intimation that I have judged Madaline harshly, that we weren’t even that different, she and I. Hadn’t we both yearned for escape, reinvention, new identities? Hadn’t we each, in the end, unmoored ourselves by cutting loose the anchors that weighed us down? I scoff at this, tell myself we are nothing alike, even as I sense that the anger I feel toward her may really be a mask for my envy over her succeeding at it all better than I had.
9) I have waited all my life to hear those words. Is it too late now for this? For us? Have we squandered too much for too long, Mamá and I? Part of me thinks it is better to go on as we have, to act as though we don’t know how ill suited we have been for each other. Less painful that way. Perhaps better than this belated offering. This fragile, trembling little glimpse of how it could have been between us. All it will beget is regret, I tell myself, and what good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.
10) You’re lucky, Pari. You won’t have to work as hard for men to take you seriously. They’ll pay attention to you. Too much beauty, it corrupts things. She would laugh. Oh, listen to me. I’m not saying I speak from experience. Of course not. It’s merely an observation.
11) You’re saying I’m not beautiful. I’m saying you don’t want to be. Besides, you are pretty, and that is plenty good enough. Je t’assure, ma cherie. It’s better, even.
12) Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.Yes it was. Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming back.
13) I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.
14) Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.
15) It’s a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they’re afraid of. What they don’t want.
16) the creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.
17) All my life, she gave to me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari.
18) Perhaps if she had grimaced at him, said something infantile, full of loathing and hate. An eruption of rancor. Perhaps that might have been better. Instead, a clean, diplomatic dismissal. And this note. Don’t worry. You’re not in it. An act of kindness. Perhaps, more accurately, an act of charity. He should be relieved. But it hurts. He feels the blow of it, like an ax to the head.
Are there any authors that have affected you as much? Are there any books that you read for the writing even though you knew how the story goes? Let us talk. I would love some recommendations.
