Two Treasures From the Sale Table

When I was at the library recently, I plucked two gems off the sale table. I was intrigued by the subject of each and also attracted to the end-of-summer hues of both covers.

The first, The Island of Lost Maps (2000), is a true story about a fellow who went around stealing valuable maps from libraries in the U.S. and Canada. It makes me a bit sick to think about the destruction that he wreaked on rare books because not only do I love books but also have a great fondness for maps. Anyway, I am looking forward to reading what author Miles Harvey has to say on this cartographic crime.

One can never read too many books about Tuscany and this one, A Thousand Days in Tuscany (2004), looks to be a treat with chapters titled "The Gorgeous Things They're Cooking Are Zucchini Blossoms" and "Perhaps, as a Genus, Olives Know Too Much".   Author and chef Marlena de Blasi writes about life in her adopted Tuscan village along with its food and festivals and includes some mighty tasty looking recipes.

Have you picked up any bargains lately?

The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran

It's a story that's been told before: make a move to a foreign county, buy a house, wrangle with government red tape and workmen to make the house livable, meet quirky characters, write a book about the experience.

Under the Tuscan Sun...A Year in Provence...French Dirt...Castles in the Air...and now The Reluctant Tuscan (2005) by Phil Doran.

I will tell you up front that I love this sort of tale and Mr. Doran does a splendid job of telling his.  

A burnt-out, unemployed, fifty-something television sitcom writer finds himself in Cambione, Tuscany as the owner of a 300-year-old stone house that his wife bought on a whim on one of her long stays in Italy studying sculpting. 

He's not too happy. She is ecstatic that they have a common goal of working together on the house and making a new, more relaxed, life  for themselves. His heart(burn) is still in Hollywood even though his life there was stressed to the max.

But, reluctantly, he falls in love with the Italian countryside, the food, the people, the culture, and his wife...again. 

Mr. Doran has such an easygoing style and his stories are laugh-out-loud hilarious. In addition to resisting everything Italian - except the food and the espresso - Mr. Doran is having a life-crisis: without his work, who is he?

The story ends happily and the reader is treated along the way to many celebratory meals; an olive harvest; grey spiders; a baby goat; Italian drivers; molto vino; the aunts Nina, Nona, and Nana; and, festivals as only the Italians can put on. 

One such festival was the celebration of Festa della Liberazione honoring the liberation of the town by the Americans in World War II. The guest of honor was one Robert Hilliard who was one of the first soldiers to enter Cambione. He was from my home town.

Another bit of synchronicity was reading about the Dorans hanging a black-and-white family portrait of the cast of The Sopranos, the television show about American gangsters, on the living room wall. He told the contractor that those rough looking fellows were some of his wife's family in America. The purpose of this white lie was to intimidate the contractor, who had sent a bill for way more than the agreed upon charges, to lower his fees. I was reading these pages the day after it was reported that James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano, had died of a heart attack.

If you have an affinity for Italy and real-life stories such as this, I recommend The Reluctant Tuscan.  Molto buono.