Welcome to Litsy!

Read this on my flight home from Rome today!

As I said in my last post, I just can‘t shake the love for Italy and my special order of scrapbook supplies arrived today. I cannot wait to relive the trip scrapbooking it!!

I‘m simply unable to quit thinking about our trip to Italy and when I saw this book tonight at HPB I thought it‘d be a great way to relive our week in Rome.

Based on how much I enjoyed this experience, I will now be eagerly searching for other travelogue memoirs by authors, or poets.
Not simply a writer that got to travel, or took a job in a new place, but an author who essentially made it his job to spend a year appreciating that new place, with a rich history, art and culture, 1/2

Beautifully put.

The eternal nutritional struggle: greens vs. chocolate.

🫣 Nope, nope, nope!

Nun luggage. Nun's need special luggage? Is it 'cause the wimple is hard to pack? 🤔

Tasty rainbow. 😋🌈

“Not-knowing is where hope and art and possibility and invention come from. It is not-knowing, that old old thing, that allows everything to be renewed.”

Love this memoir... love this author‘s writing. ❤️

Well, I don‘t have as many Rome books as I do Paris books but I loved this one. Doerr wrote All the Light We Cannot See during this period. #Rome #LitsySpringBreak

I‘ve experienced two seasons, spring and summer, in Italy (not in #Rome) and I hope to go back as soon as it‘s safe.

#LitsySpringBreak

Doerr won the Pulitzer for “All the Light We Cannot See” - which I will never read because I have a bias against books with “light” in the title.
This is a very light read about, well, a year spent in Rome. It had little meaning except it was fun to hear a writer‘s daily neurosis and flights of fancy and terror. I used to think it was just me, but now I think writers just think differently.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ How lovely to revisit Rome through Doerr‘s observant lense, only instead of a short trip, he and his wife move there for a year ... with infant twins! Imagine simultaneously navigating parenthood and a new country, new language. But the Rome Prize beckoned. He had a novel to write; a future Pulitzer winner it turns out. In this audio, you can hear the wonder and amusement of fatherhood in his voice. And he‘s low-key funny. Solid memoir!

Today, my littlest baby is SEVEN! 😭😭 Y‘all, he was 2 when I joined this life-changing community. 💚

#audiobaking

A lovely diversion from all the mess in the world, although his descriptions of infant-induced insomnia had me remembering those days. My kids are 15 and 19 now but some things never leave you... the descriptions of Rome were evocative and delicious. I lived in Paris for a year and Doerr captures that displaced helplessness beautifully.

I enjoyed this lovely memoir of Doerr‘s year in Rome. I lived vicariously through his descriptions of travel and related deeply with his observations on being a parent of little ones. This was my August #doublespin and I‘m so glad I finally read it!

“Italy is like America before coffee was “to go”...

Pic: The Trastavere neighborhood in Rome. Doerr made me frantically pull up pictures from our trip :)

Kicking off #bookspinbonanza
Already a little out of order. 😬 But I‘m expecting much best reading month ever! @TheAromaofBooks

So excited to start this one - since we spent some time in Rome on our honeymoon in May 2019, I‘ve been thinking of our travels lately and missing the amazing things we got to see in Europe ❤️ Hoping this one brings back more memories 😁

Thoroughly enjoyed this. I liked his style of writing and also the elaborate detail about Pliny and other writers. The descriptions about Rome are great, full of little extra details. I'm super excited to be visiting in March.

Absolutely riveted by All the Light so chose this as my pre Rome visit book!
It details the year he spent in Rome whilst writing a novel. The book is split into seasons and he's with his family during the stay.
Hoping for some ideas of places to add to my never-ending list of attractions there. 😊😊😊

Lovely, just lovely.

Total #blameitonlitsy find and purchase 🤣 Should be a good read!

I just love to read memoirs of people‘s‘ adventures in other countries and this is one of the best that I‘ve ever read. The writing is engaging and accessible and I felt like I was in Rome and I didn‘t want to go home at the end. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Well, I just took an incredible trip to Rome, compliments of a memoir by Anthony Doerr. His vivid voice made me see the sights, smell the food and flora, and experience the feeling of being an American traveler in a foreign land. Doerr wrote this book seven years before All The Light We Cannot See. Favoloso!

Now reading: #MMD Flight Pick for March 2019

I enjoyed this exploration of Rome on 2 hours of sleep. 😀 I never had twins, but my kids are very close in age, and I can‘t imagine moving with them to a place where nothing was familiar! Lovely writing, as always with Doerr.

I started this yesterday and it does not disappoint. #currentlyreading

#december1963 #winterwonderland
Have to admit I didn‘t realise this author had written anything else but All the Light....

We are about to go to London in less than two weeks. But I cannot handle the sadness that comes when you return from the trip of a lifetime. So I always plan the trip after the next trip. Care to guess what the next destination will be? To prep, I‘m listening to this audiobook, narrated by the author. I find the author a bit of a bore, and kind of basic, to be honest. Not a recommended listen.

Second book from Anthony Doerr, that I am reading. First one left me speechless. Wondering where this one will take me. #authorobssessions

My September Reading wrap-up: Four books read; two nonfiction, one audiobook, one mystery. This was a little bit of a reading slump for me, but I have multiple books in progress. It was hard to get focused on one long enough to finish it! Four Seasons in Rome was my favorite of the four, but Callings was also great. I loved reading people's stories.

It almost took me four seasons to read this book. I started it in the spring and set it aside before picking it up again during the recent hurricane. It is almost fall! I enjoyed this look at the author's family life -- with newborn twins -- and his creative life while on a sabbatical in Italy. The book also gives glimpses at history and present of Rome. I love Italy so this was great for me.

Waiting out Hurricane Florence with a book and a cat. (Second cat busy watching out the window). I hope everyone fairs well through the storm.

Driving across Wyoming but walking through Rome in my mind. How fascinating reading is. ❤️

It really can‘t get much better than this. Wheat beer, reading about Rome for a trip to Italy in eight weeks or so, and doing a little writing. Hummus platter not pictured. 😊😌☺️😀

#LitsyAtoZ. @BookishMarginalia

Updating my LitsyAtoZ: Tagged book is current read. About halfway and it is so-so. Other finishes are B)Behold the Dreamers 👍🏼 👍🏼Q) The Queen‘s Accomplice 👌🏼 R) Concealed in Death - Robb 👍🏼 S) Shadow and Bone 👍🏼 and U) Under the Wide and Starry Sky 👌🏼

6 down 20 to go....

I have five or so library books that I should be reading but this one has been calling to me. It‘s short so I should finish it pretty soon, even though my view is obstructed a little thanks to my cat, Kate. #currentlyreading #lazySunday

I love this one! It was such a beautiful picture of exploring early parenthood and a new culture. Of course the authors and beautiful prose helps as well!

Love this, the not knowing is part of the magic. Much like the journey, not the destination as such.

I also finally finished this one while painting. This is a relaxing book, one to listen to when you want reflection and beautiful language. Though at times, I felt the writing was too flowery, too descriptive, I also sighed in delight at some of the descriptions of a year in Rome. It definitely makes me want to live in another country for a year, for it seems that's the only way to really experience the life that exists there.

Just lovely!

This was a toss up between so-so and a pick. I was a bit disappointed with the content, but can't quite put my finger on what was missing. The author traveled to Rome with his wife and twin baby boys (!) to spend a year writing. The focus, I feel, was on the couples understandably clumsy attempts to function, interspersed with the sights and people of Rome. Audio

I don't think I've ever caught my litfluence score when it's a perfectly round number like this. I ❤ Litsy! It's my happy place thanks to all of you wonderful people. 😊

.14/06/2017.
"In the heat of a summer afternoon, churches are the only refuges, dim and cool, spots swarming across floors I want to stay in these churches for hours; I want to take off my shirt and lie on the marble, my chest against the stone, and let the perpetual dusk drift over me"

This would be a lovely book to read at any time, but was especially fitting before my trip to Rome last week. We stayed near to where Doerr and his family lived during their time in the city and explored many of the same places. So fun to combine my reading with 'real life'! Here's the view from the Ponte Sisto at sunset. And if anyone wants a great B&B near the Basilica, A Casa di Nannali is AMAZING 🙌🏼

I enjoyed a half of it, so it will be a pick??. After "All the lights..." (that I hate) I decided to give the author another chance. And I would say I enjoy this book more and clearly saw writing talent in this. It reminds me "Eat, Pray, Love" ( the "Eat" part) and I could not shake the sense how similar these books are in description of Rome. At the half of it I kind of tired of flat plot and felt relieved when I finished it.

One year ago today, while I was studying abroad in Rome with this amazing guy, we started dating. In addition to the many perfect things about him and our relationship, he is always willing to talk about books with me, he reads the books I recommend to him, he gives me books for presents, and he cuddles with me endlessly while we read books together. In a world that can be a downer, I wanted to share a bit of #joy with y'all today :)