Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria
10 best books like Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria (Mark Rotella): As the Romans Do: An American Family's Italian Odyssey, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns, 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan, The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria, Trieste and The Meaning of Nowhere, An Italian Affair, Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table, The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian, Looking for Lovedu: A Woman's Journey Through Africa
A celebration of the character and style of one of the world's most spectacular cities! This vibrant insider's view of the most mature city on earth is the perfect companion for anyone who loves anything Italian. In 1995, after a twenty-year love affair with Italy, Alan Epstein fulfilled his dream to...
Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons
| Author | Matthew Fort |
| ISBN | 0091910803 |
'Sicily struck me then as the most fascinating place I had ever visited. I didn't change that opinion over the intervening years, no matter where I travelled. I meant to go back. Time and again I made plans. Time and again I was thwarted.'
At the age of twenty-six Matthew Fort first visited the...
A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns
| Author | Denis Lipman |
| ISBN | 1934848247 |
Denis Lipman left London’s East End for Washington, DC more than 20 years ago, but made an annual pilgrimage year after year to visit aging parents, a pair of cantankerous, real-life Cockneys. He endured the visits as best he could. Enter an American wife. Not content with a grin-and-bear-it attitude,...
36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan
| Author | Cathy N. Davidson |
| ISBN | 0822339137 |
In 1980 Cathy N. Davidson traveled to Japan to teach English at a leading all-women’s university. It was the first of many journeys and the beginning of a deep and abiding fascination. In this extraordinary book, Davidson depicts a series of intimate moments and small epiphanies that together make...
The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria
| Author | Marlena de Blasi |
| ISBN | 1565124731 |
With the breathless anticipation that seduced her readers to fall in love with Venice and then Tuscany, Marlena de Blasi now takes us on a new journey as she moves with her husband, Fernando, to Orvieto, a large and ancient city in Italy's Umbria. Having neither an edge to a sea nor a face to a foreign land,...
| Author | Jan Morris |
| ISBN | 0306811804 |
Here's a book for lovers of all things Italian. This city on the Adriatic has always tantalized Jan Morris with its moodiness and changeability. After visiting Trieste for more than half a century, she has come to see it as a touchstone for her interests and preoccupations: cities, seas, empires. It...
| Author | Laura Fraser |
| ISBN | 0375724850 |
When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual...
| Author | Linda Ellerbee |
| ISBN | 0425209733 |
I was given this book for my birthday and I wrote about it in my blog. I quoted part of the first chapter because Ellerbee wrote about a restaurant in Florence, Italy, and I knew exactly which place she meant. Further, I had taken a photograph of the entrance to the restaurant: it features a small table, set...
| Author | Phil Doran |
| ISBN | 1592401899 |
After years of working on a string of sitcoms, Phil Doran found himself on the outside looking in. Just as he and his peers had replaced the older guys when he was coming up the ranks, it was now happening to him. And it was freaking him out. He came home every night angry, burned- out, and exhausted. After...
| Author | Ann Jones |
| ISBN | 0375705333 |
The adventure began when a young British photographer, Kevin Muggleton, suggested driving from one end of Africa to the other–“You know, the old ‘Cape to Cairo’ sort of thing.” For the renowned feminist writer Ann Jones, it soon became an expedition with a mission: to find the legendary...
| Author | Polly Evans |
| ISBN | 0385339941 |
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Polly Evans was a woman with a mission. Before the traditional New Zealand male hung up his sheep shears for good, Polly wanted to see this vanishing species with her own eyes. Venturing into the land of giant kauri trees and smaller kiwi birds, she explores the country...
| Author | John Dickie |
| ISBN | 0743277996 |
Buon appetito! Everyone loves Italian food. But how did the Italians come to eat so well? The answer lies amid the vibrant beauty of Italy's historic cities. For a thousand years, they have been magnets for everything that makes for great eating: ingredients, talent, money, and power. Italian...
Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana
| Author | Isadora Tattlin |
| ISBN | 0767914848 |
Isadora Tattlin was accustomed to relocating often for her husband’s work. But when he accepted a post in Cuba in the early 1990s, she resolved to keep a detailed diary of her time there, recording her daily experiences as a wife, mother, and foreigner in a land of contraband. The result is a striking,...
Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France
| Author | Vivian Swift |
| ISBN | 1608195325 |
Road trip: those are still the two most inspiring words to vagabonds and couch potatoes alike; after all, the great American spirit was forged by road trippers from the Pilgrims to Lewis and Clark to the Dharma Bums. Le Road Trip combines the appeal of the iconic American quest with France's irresistible...
The Stone Boudoir: Travels Through the Hidden Villages of Sicily
| Author | Theresa Maggio |
| ISBN | 0738208000 |
In this sparkling book, Theresa Maggio takes us on a journey in search of Sicily's most remote and least explored mountain towns. Using her grandparents' ancestral village of Santa Margherita Belice as her base camp, she pores over old maps to plot her adventure, selecting as her targets the smallest...
Vanilla Beans & Brodo: Real Life in the Hills of Tuscany
| Author | Isabella Dusi |
| ISBN | 0743404114 |
Isabella Dusi, a native Australian, settled in Montalcino, a beautiful mountain eyrie famous for its wine and the proud nature of its inhabitants. Her acceptance into this close-knit community was a hard-won thing and has inspired Isabella to capture the true spirit of Montalcino. Vanilla Beans...
| Author | Barbara Grizzuti Harrison |
| ISBN | 0871137275 |
This book would not be the average reader's cup of tea to a 4 star level, IMHO. But it's almost a 5 star to me, despite it being dated. 4.5 star
She's not a writer with succinct word skill. She wanders all over the place with interface, comparisons or neither at all. But as much as she has an opinion,...
The Italians: A Full-Length Portrait Featuring Their Manners and Morals
| Author | Luigi Barzini |
| ISBN | 0684825007 |
In this consummate portrait of the Italian people, bestselling author, publisher, journalist, and politician Luigi Barzini delves deeply into the Italian national character, discovering both its great qualities and its imperfections. Barzini is startlingly frank as he examines "the two Italies":...
La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language
| Author | Dianne Hales |
| ISBN | 0767927699 |
“Italians say that someone who acquires a new language ‘possesses’ it. In my case, Italian possesses me. With Italian racing like blood through my veins, I do indeed see with different eyes, hear with different ears, and drink in the world with all my senses…”
A celebration...
Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town
| Author | Michael Rips |
| ISBN | 0316748641 |
This book is a quick read, only 200 pages but full of amusing anecdotes and Italian eccentrics, an interesting mix of historical fact and myth, as well as the author's reflections on life in a small hilltop town called Sutri.
Sutri is in the Tuscia, where I live, so the book was of particular interest....
Around the World in 80 Dinners: The Ultimate Culinary Adventure
| Author | Cheryl Alters Jamison |
| ISBN | 0060878959 |
Join Cheryl and Bill Jamison, James Beard Award winners of The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking and Entertaining, on a gastronomic tour around the world
After years of writing award-winning cookbooks, renowned culinary experts Cheryl and Bill Jamison were ready to take a break. So in the fall of...
| Author | Eric Newby |
| ISBN | 0864426054 |
In 1967 Eric and Wanda Newby fulfilled a long-cherished dream when they bought a run-down farmhouse in northern Tuscany, in the foothills of the Italian Alps. They were the first foreigners to live in the region. "A Small Place in Italy" describes how the house was restored with the help of their neighbors,...
| Author | Tobias Jones |
| ISBN | 0865477248 |
In 1999 Tobias Jones immigrated to Italy, expecting to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors. Instead, he found a very different country: one besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia. The Dark Heart of Italy is Jones's account of his four-year...
No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice
| Author | Judith Martin |
| ISBN | 0393330605 |
I smelled trouble when the author first addressed me as “gentle reader.” No real surprise, I suppose, since author, Judith Martin, is none other than Miss Manners Herself, but Dorothy Parker (who used the term decades ago), she ain’t. What I hoped would offer charming, witty, acerbic, brittle...
In this Bracingly Honest, Page-Turning Memoir, what begins as a manic money chase-desperate to hang on to his home after his marriage breaks up. David Denby realizes he can buy out his wife's share only if he can first make a killing in the stock market-ultimately becomes an unforgettable encounter...
