Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Books”
Cool, crisp mountain air – make sure to breathe deeply when you visit Calabria, as the region has the cleanest air in Europe! All of the mountains contribute to this freshness with three major ranges: the Pollino in the north, the Sila in the center and the Aspromonte in the south. As a matter of fact, the Sila Mountains, a …
These past six months have both dragged and flown. And I realize that my sixth blogiversary is upon me. Reflecting on whether or not the time actually adds up to a year, I remind myself that we must surely be thankful for our ability to imagine, to ponder past our own backyards or as they say #DreamNowTravelLater – I’m learning …
The day has come. Basilicata: Authentic Italy, my new book about the unassuming region in the instep of the Italian boot is available! Years of planning, in-person research (the best part!), writing and production elements, and then, the date sort of sneaks up on you.
What’s the next best thing to visiting a place? Reading about it. While I would have loved to have been able to follow through with my Calabria tours this past spring, the lockdown gave me the opportunity to catch up on a few books that had been waiting patiently on my shelf. Amongst them, La Brigantessa by Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli.
With the “stay at home” order in place, I find myself flipping through old books and photos. And as news outlets report scenarios ever more ominous, I turn to images of better times and lovelier places. In this post, I would like to share a few beauties of Calabria through the words of visitors who passed through the region over …
What 19th-century American writer set 20 novels, a short story, 5 non-fiction works and a play in Italy? Prolific, imaginative, romantic, entertaining and fantastical, the born storyteller possessed a firm grasp of Italian culture, a sensitivity to character and a penchant for the bizarre. But alas, he is nearly forgotten. Francis Marion Crawford, who traveled the world over and made …
It seems as though I just finished celebrating 2 years of My Italian Blog and my third Blogiversary has already crept up on me. On this milestone (Trust me, the use of the word is not an exaggeration, and if you have a blog, you understand completely.), I would like to reflect on the things I have done over the …
How would you feel if you were the descendent of a murderer? Helene Stapinski grew up hearing stories about her great-great grandmother, the strong-willed matriarch and murderess who fled to America and gave life to the Vena family of Jersey City, New Jersey. The legend gnawed at Stapinski, so she decided to play history detective and embark on a journey …
“We were told in no uncertain terms that we were the type of people who wore shoes…” Grazia Ietto Gillies reminisces of her early life in By the Olive Groves, A Calabrian Childhood, a memoir that focuses on her time growing up in Delianuova, a hill town of southern Calabria.
Life is funny. When I began to study the Italian language as an adult and made my first attempts at conversation, I would never have imagined that one day I would be capable of giving full-fledged presentations in Italian or would appear on Italian TV.