Peregrinations #3
Starting this issue of the Peregrinations newsletter with a fabulous picture of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Roma) before we venture forth on our literary rambles and the start of the Zig-Zag tour of Italy.
Library Extension Chrome. Speaking of libraries did you know that you can add a Library Extension to the Chrome browser so that if you are searching for a book on Amazon say the extension will show you if that book is available at your local library. All you need to do is register your library card in the Chrome extension and viola!
I'm always amazed by the free or very cheap (albeit older books typically) that are available through Amazon (I understand that Amazon is not everyone's cup of tea for sure) but I picked up Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes and The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo recently not to mention about thirty (30) other books over the years.
What's in the My Book Bag Now?
Non-Fiction
- Twilight in Italy by D.H. Lawrence (Reading)
- Walking by Henry David Thoreau
- Italian Hours by Henry James
- Desert Queen by Janet Wallach (All about Gertrude Bell) (Read. In my library)
- Letters of Travel by Rudyard Kipling
- Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle. Dervla Murphy (1963) (Read. A wonderful adventure! and a very prolific author of more than 30 travel/adventure books )
- Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard (Read). In a similar vein, another book jumps to mind 'Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures' by Merlin Sheldrake (Not read yet)
- The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus by Lucy Ward (Read)
Fiction
- And Fire Came Down by Emma Viskic (Read)
- The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada (Read)
- Fortune by Amanda Smyth (Read)
- Slow Horses by Mick Herron (Read. Really good and the first in a series)
- The Likeness by Tana French (Read - very good!)
- The Book of Evidence by John Banville (Reading)
- Standing in the Shadows by Peter Robinson (Read. Very good!) This is the last of the Inspector Banks novels (29th book) as Peter Robinson passed away in 2022.
Literature Map. Try this out it's really neat. Just type in your favorite author and it will show you what other authors have a similar writing style to your named author by how close they are on the map.
Literature-Map - The Tourist Map of Literature
Our Zig-Zag Tour Through Italy
While we love the big cities in Italy (well to some extent anyway!) we really love the Italian countryside and its people and scenery. Our go-to trip to Italy is now the many many wineries, food of course, and just the pure Italian countryside. The Sunday Italian family lunches are a big draw for us as opposed to the overcrowded tourist attractions in the big cities.
Our own zig-zag tour through Italy (Spring 2022) started in Rome but only for two nights and then by overnight ferry to Sicily. Sicily has some of the most chaotic cities imaginable but also some wonderful countryside and attractions - the Valley of the Temples is a good example. Another is The Scala dei Turchi (The Stairs of the Turk) is a rocky cliff on the coast of Realmonte, near Porto Empedocle, southern Sicily, Italy.
Sicily to Puglia (Apulia) through the Straits of Messina which has its own legends in antiquity - the Myth of the three sirens: Leucosia, Partenope, Ligea, and Scylla and Charybdis (the legend of the two monsters of the Strait of Messina). Through Calabria (books on Calabria in the last newsletter) to Puglia (the heel of Italy). It is often thought of as 'the poor man's Italy' and is looked down on by Northern Italians to a large extent but is delightful in its own way. Check out the trulli in Puglia - some available as Airbnb rentals of course.
Speaking of Italian Sunday family lunches here is one that we ate at near Ostuni in Puglia (Province of Brindisi) 'Sele and Pepe' Restaurant. Literally, 100 plus Italians, comprising huge families from the wheelchair-bound elderly to the screaming infants and everybody in between. Course after course of wonderful food and vino.
Umbria (The Green Heart of Italy)
Just saw a Facebook post through Umbrian Tourism about the fact that Dante Alighieri's 'The Divine Comedy' (the first part is the Inferno) was first published in Foligno in 1472 and there is an original surviving page from that printing in the Museo della Stampa.
https://www.umbriatourism.it/web/umbria/-/dante-in-umbria-en
Six Books You Must Read Before Your Trip to Italy from ItaliaRail
- You may need to copy and paste this into your browser
- https://www.italiarail.com/culture/six-books-you-must-read-your-trip-italy
Includes one of my favorite authors Elena Ferrante
Mechanics Institutes
Mechanics Institutes were founded in Britain in the early 1800s as educational establishments for working men often by local industrialists. Many of these have evolved into local libraries and higher education institutions such as colleges and universities. Read more on the Wikipedia link provided above. Obviously, there is a very long history of libraries stretching back through the millennia - think of the Library of Alexandria et al but these Mechanics Institutes represent the start of libraries for the 'common' man in English speaking world at least.
The Marginalian Newsletter
I highly recommend subscribing (it's free) to and reading The Marginalian by Maria Popova especially if you have a literary state of mind
Yulia Denisyuk
We will be making a short detour in the next newsletter through the book Adriatic by Robert D. Kaplan though it does start in Italy.
- As such a consummate expert on Italy as Sir David Gilmour writes, until the end of the eighteenth century, "Italy remained [only] a literary idea, an abstract concept, an imaginary homeland or simply a sentimental urge."
- Travel, as opposed to tourism, is only made possible by literature. A landscape must be anchored in books during this time in history when globalization has obliterated much of what is distinctive.