CHILL OUT WITH THEBOOKJEANIE

Spring is a great time to head outdoors with a good book.  And what better place to be than a piazza in Italy, with the warm sun on your back and a cup of espresso.  The next best thing to being in Italy is reading about it and here are a few suggestions. 

Buena lettura!

The Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga. The year is 1966 and flood waters have devastated the city of Florence. Margot Harringgton, a twenty-nine year old book conservator, impulsively leaves her job in Chicago and flies to Italy, "to save whatever I could save, including myself."  Feeling her life has reached a dead end, our narrator returns to the city where she spent a year with her mother when she was a teenager, with no real plan in mind.  After a brief stint with a conservation team from Harvard who looked down upon her skills,  Margot volunteers to repair and restore numerous damages manuscripts at a cloistered convent.  The abbess, Madre Bessa, is the cousin of the man who will eventually become her lover, and she involves Margot in a plot to save the convent by restoring and secretly selling a 16th century volume of erotic poems and drawings by Pietro Aretino, the "sixteen pleasures." Rich in the art and sensuality of Florence, The Sixteen Pleasures details the process of fresco restoration and book conservation as well as the fevered relationship of young Margot and Sandor, a charming Italian art restorer whose relationship to his estranged wife is unclear.  Idealistic, trusting, and yet savvy to the ways of Italian men, Margot is  an endearing narrator who we can't help but care about, holding our breath as she risks so much of herself for what she believes in as well as for the man who may not really deserve her devotion. If you can't make it to Italy this summer, enjoy wandering the twisting streets and quiet bridges of Florence in Hellenga's luminous first novel.

A discussion of literature set in Italy must include the suspenseful, intelligent series of mysteries by Donna Leon set in the perfect location for intruigue and dark secrets, Venice.  Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venetian Questura is our guide through the darker side of Venice.  Brunetti, a law graduate and lay philosopher, investigates not only the physical details of numerous crimes in Leon's more than twenty-one novels, but debates and discusses the changing morals and values of Venetian society with his colleagues and his wife Claudia, a professor of English literature, as he sips numerous expressos, glasses of prosecco, and enviable multi-course lunches at home on a terrace overlooking the city. Unethical politicians and police officials, struggling immigrants, privileged aristocracy living along the Grand Canal all come under Brunetti's scutiny in this totally addicting series of murder, theft, and corruption in one of the most beautiful, romantic, and mysterious cities in the world.

If you are travelling to the heart of the Italian Renaissance, don't forget to bring your old art history textbook with you.

Remember that heavy grey tome?  Well, you can now stuff it with your iPad, cell phone, and biscotti . . .

Have a wonderful week, and no matter where you are. . .

KEEP READING!