Hello in 2011! In this, my first post in this calendar year, I'm departing from Tuscany and Umbria to enthuse about a book for children that has nothing to do with travel (except in a small way). People who write for their own blogs can, of course, write about whatever they want, myself included, which can sometimes be annoying. Who has the time to read about a whole bunch of useless stuff? (Probably those same people I see hanging out in coffee bars, but that's another topic.)

I believe that my blog features a lot of useful, interesting, and just plain fun information, even if it doesn't all relate directly to travel, like The Butt Book by Artie Bennett (illustrations by Mike Lester, Bloomsbury, 2010). This picture book is written in rhyme -- very hard to do well -- and though it's not as lengthy as, say, a book by Dr. Seuss (the king of rhyme), it's the perfect length for the seven-and-under set and is great fun to read aloud. And here's the thing of it: kids love butts. Girls and boys both. They positively can't hold back when someone mentions the word butt or bottom, and they typically burst out laughing. One of the best gifts in the world to give a kid is a rubber whoopie cushion (and at about $1 it's one of the cheapest, too) - a whoopie cushion guarantees peals of uncontrollable laughter, and after a while the adults can't help but laugh too because the kids are falling down and practically about to expire. And do you remember heinie bumpers? Just asking someone in a pool if they want to do them usually results in smiling, but then after you do them -- two people hold hands and then go under water with their feet touching and then swing around until their butts meet -- you are just howling. But just mention of the word 'butt' (sorry, no pun intended) brings huge smiles to the faces of kids, and in this winning book Bennett reminds us that "Butts are vital body parts, important as our heads or hearts," yet he also notes that "when dancing, you can shake your booty. Shake, shake, shake you little cutie." I said earlier that this book relates to travel in a small way, and it does so when Bennett explains that "Some names for butts have foreign flair: tuchas, keister, derriere!" and "In England, where they call moms "mums," people call their buttocks "bums." (I love any book that expands a kid's horizons, even in a small way.)

It warms my heart to know that I'm not alone in my enthusiasm for this book: The Brooklyn Paper says "you gotta love The Butt Book" and The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books opined that "...the verse is reliably and rewardingly silly. Use this for revving up the silliness anytime." Bennett is a wordsmith par excellence -- browse his witty site, http://www.artiebennett.com/ -- and, among other distinctions, he is probably the youngest person ever to have sold a crossword puzzle to The New York Times.

Now that I think of it, giving a young child a whoopie cushion and a copy of The Butt Book just might possibly be the most perfect gift on earth. And there's no need to wait for a holiday or a special occasion: let the laughter begin now.

This is my last post for 2010, and I'm devoting it to two recently published books that are terrific and must-haves: Biscotti: Recipes from the Kitchen of the American Academy in Rome (The Little Bookroom) and Grandi Vini: An Opinionated Tour of Italy's 89 Finest Wines (Clarkson Potter).

I no longer buy biscotti, the generic word for cookies in Italian, since I started making them myself. I can't bring myself to pay upwards of $2, $3, or $4 for something that is just not very hard to make. Plus, I can't stand all those newfangled versions, with white chocolate stripes and odd combinations of dried fruit and spices and triple milk and dark chocolate, etc. As I mention in my Tuscany and Umbria book, I have for many years now been baking the Biscotti di Prato recipe from Biscotti by Lou Siebert Pappas (Chronicle Books, 1992) and the basic Biscotti recipe in Corby Kummer's The Joy of Coffee (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), and both of these recipes have been unfailingly delicious. So when I heard about this new Biscotti book, I wasn't all that tempted. But then I got a copy and made a few recipes, and I will now proclaim that this is positively the best book on Italian cookies currently available, and is on a short list of best cookbooks for Italian desserts. Alice Waters, who contributed the Foreword, helped to create the Rome Sustainable Food Project, which is dedicated to providing organic, local, and sustainable meals for the community of the American Academy in Rome. Waters hired Mona Talbott, a Chez Panisse alum, to head up the Project, and Talbott has co-authored this book with Mirella Misenti, the pastry cook at the Academy. Talbott informs readers that "at noon each day a plate of freshly baked biscotti is placed on the end of the AAR bar to tempt the noisy crowd that drinks espresso after lunch. We know from experience that warm cioccolata e nocciole sell out quickly and that the handsome AAR gardeners are particularly fond of the baci di cocco. The library staff who come for coffee at precisely 3:30 love the biscotti di fichi; bolle di neve is relished by the friendly library reader from Bologna. It seems that everyone has a favorite." There are recipes for Milk & Wine Biscotti, Nut Biscotti, Honey, Citrus and Spice Biscotti, Meringues, and five recipes for biscotti with chocolate. For me, the recipes in the Honey, Citrus and Spice section were a revelation: I'd previously thought that the biscotti I'd seen with all those dried fruit in them were contrived; actually, I still think most of them are. But when I learned that the Academy has a large citrus grove, and that the cooking staff is always looking to use lemons and oranges in their cooking, it made perfect sense to me to use ingredients in your backyard, so to speak. This little (approximately 5 1/2 " x 7 1/4") book is filled with color photographs and is great for gift-giving, but is also essenziale in any Italophile's kitchen!

My question for Joe Bastianiach, the author of Grandi Vini, is, why only 89 wines? Or, why not just 50? Why not go for 100? It doesn't really matter. I believe anyone reading this knows that Joe is a partner, with Mario Batali, of a number of acclaimed Italian restaurants, and is also the son of Lidia Bastianich, cookbook author and star of her own PBS show. Joe is also one of America's foremost authorities on Italian wine, and he has been honored with a James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional. He is also the proprietor of four wine estates in Italy, and most recently, he opened Eataly New York -- a fabulous Italian culinary marketplace -- with Oscar Farinetti, Batali, and his Mom, and if you have visited Eataly you know how wonderful an outpost it is! The reason I love this book so much is that Joe tells the stories behind the people who make these noteworthy wines. I'm attracted to this because I, too, am a teller of stories, and in fact it is what makes my Collected Traveler books so unique. When I was younger, in what I will refer to as my salad days, I worked as a news and feature reporter in print, radio, and television, and what I loved most about my job was meeting the people I was to interview and hearing their stories. This is what makes the world an interesting place. Yes, travel is about seeing things but it is equally about meeting people and finding out how these people are connected to places and to sites. As Joe notes, "I handpicked these wines not only for their absolute quality but also for what they represent in the current Italian enological landscape; each wine and its maker tells us a story. Although the wines often speak for themselves in the glass, the details of their journey from grape to bottle are likewise illuminating." This is a great book to give to someone who is new to Italian wine or to someone who is very familiar with lots of Italian wines; but it's also great for you. Granted, Mario Batali may be biased, but I think he's got it absolutely right when he notes that "Reading Grandi Vini is like being a member of a secret wine geek club, with access to the previously private whole magilla on the modern Italian wine world."

Had I seen a copy of The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy (Quirk Books, 2010; originally published in London by Boxtree, an imprint of Pan Macmillan) I would have included it in my previous post on great books to give and keep. The Geometry of Pasta is not like any other book you've seen. Yes, there are recipes -- over 100 of them -- and you will want to make most if not all of them; but there are also really cool black and white drawings of the pasta shapes that are more like works of art. And, most importantly, there are terrific introductions for each pasta shape that is informative and interesting, such as this one for corzetti, large coins of pasta from Liguria: "their name derives from an old Genovese money-piece via crosets - a pasta dating from the fourteenth century and as long as your thumb." As the authors note, "pasta is different across Italy...this diversity is true at every level. From region to region, the same pasta is cooked with a different sauce." If you think all the pastas of Italy are found in North American grocery stores, this book -- and another one published last year that I love, Encyclopedia of Pasta by Oretta Zanini De Vita, translated by Maureen B. Fant and with a foreword by Carol Field (University of California Press) -- will be eye openers. Each pasta entry in The Geometry of Pasta includes a list of synonyms, a recipe for making the pasta, other sauces that are good matches, and at least one recipe using the particular shape. Hildebrand is a designer who has worked on a number of cookbooks, including some by Nigella Lawson, as well as projects for clients such as The Balvenie single malt scotch, Fortnum & Mason, and Hendrick's Gin, and Kenedy is co-owner of Bocca di Lupo (http://www.boccadilupo.com/), recently voted London's best restaurant by Time Out and the Evening Standard, so this team is truly qualified to recommend the perfect shape and the perfect sauce.

If you are lucky enough to visit the city of Firenze this month you'll be there at a time when the city is festive and decorated, which is to be expected, but what you might not know in advance is that a surprise awaits: on the Sundays leading up to Christmas, all the department stores and many smaller shops and boutiques are open for business! Florence, and Italy, and indeed many places in Europe, are not open 24/7, which I admire; but I also admit that if you only have a few days in one place, you could literally never set foot in a retail shop you may have really wanted to visit (some shops close at lunchtime on Saturday, are closed all day on Sunday, and again on Monday morning or all day on Monday). But these Sunday openings provide more opportunities for visitors -- and locals, who typically spend much of the first Sunday taking notes and comparing prices -- to shop for souvenirs and gifts. Note that you should expect public transportation and streets to be more crowded, so allow more time to get around.


And as this is the time of year when gift giving, for lots of reasons, is on many of our minds, I am devoting this post to some great gifts that are perfect for anyone who loves Italy, including, I presume, you! These are all books, yes, hardcover books with real paper, because it's the best format for them. I didn't know about them when I was working on my Tuscany and Umbria book, so they're not included, but I'm happy to now have the opportunity to enthuse about them here on my blog. These books are each nearly impossible to resist if you are an Italophile:


Italian Joy by Carla Coulson (Lantern, an imprint of Penguin, 2005). It was Christmas time exactly ten years ago that Coulson, originally from Australia, had her wake-up moment in life. As everyone around her was happy and joyful, she was becoming increasingly depressed. Another Christmas alone and a New Year "that looked like being the same as the one that was almost over were just painful reminders of what my life hadn't become." So when she opened her Thai takeaway on Christmas Eve and noticed she'd been given a gift -- a silver jewelry box and a 2001 laminated takeaway menu for the fridge -- she was mortified, and that silver jewelry box was the reminder that life was passing her by. Though she had a great apartment, nice and exotic furnishings, and a successful business that took her all over the world, her friends cheered her on when she sold her business, packed some suitcases, rented her apartment, and left for Italy with her Nikon camera. Coulson enrolled in a photography course, bought a bicycle, and paid two weeks' rent in advance, but stayed for two years in a group house. She then found a small apartment in the Oltrarno, and has been "filled with an indescribable happiness for what my life had become." In chapters covering A tavola, Al bar, Il mercato, La lavanderia, La vespa, Il viaggio, La Madonna, ha famiglia e gli amici, gli Italiani, L'estate, and buon appetito, Coulson has put together a love letter to Italy in general and Florence in particular. She fell in love with photography -- "it allowed me to reflect on my world and the small things in it that give me great pleasure" -- and her photos in this book are terrific and they ooze with her enthusiasm and passion for her adopted home. More than most other photography books of this type, this one is filled with so many of the details that make Florence such a beautiful place. Plus, you learn lots of wonderful Italian phrases, like Non c'e fretta (there is no hurry), Tacchi, tacchi e solo tacchi (heels, heels and only heels, as in women's footwear) and buone cose (good things), and the fact that Florentines pronounce the letter 'c' as 'h,' which I'd read about before but Coulson gives a number of specific examples, including that her first name is often pronounced Harla. Coulson also shares some recommendations for her favorite places in Firenze, like Caffe degli Artigiani in piazza della Passera; the market in piazza Santo Spirito; Pasquale's bar on Borgo Pinti; and Cibreo Caffe (one of my faves too!). And, she shares details of her trips to Puglia, Venice, Bologna, and Positano, one of my most favorite places on earth -- like me and my friend Amy H., Coulson also took the little wooden boat over to the little beach of Laurito. I can taste the grilled packages of mozzarella wrapped in lemon leaves like I had it yesterday, and Amy and I did not take for granted that we spent an afternoon in paradiso (note to self: I must get back there as soon as I can!). I could ramble on about this special book....but perhaps this is sufficient! I ordered my copy from amazon, but note that a new book, French Essence: Ambience, Beauty, and Style in Provence, by Vicki Archer, features Coulson's photographs and is stocked in many stores. You can also keep up with Coulson via her blog, at http://www.carlalovesphotography.blogspot.com/.

Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence by Merrill Joan Gerber (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). I first learned of this memoir from Lisa McGarry, another American who lives in Florence and whose own book, The Piazzas of Florence: Mapping a Renaissance Spirit (Pier 9/Murdoch, 2008) I positively adore (see my interview with Lisa in my book) but at the time I was too busy to track down a copy. Happily, my friend and author Barbara Ohrbach (Dreaming of Florence, Dreaming of Tuscany, both published by Rizzoli) was culling her bookshelves and she gave a copy to me. Gerber was in the enviable position (thought she didn't immediately know it) of being offered a chance to live in Florence for a semester as her husband, a history professor, was leading a class of students there. She went with a little bit of foot dragging (her mother was not in the best of health, and she was, frankly, a little afraid of not knowing the language, etc.) but when she and Joe arrived at their "flat full of sun" at least a few of her doubts melted away. Anyone who's lived anywhere abroad will identify with Gerber's daily joys and tribulations; but for anyone about to depart for an extended spell in Firenze this is required reading! Occasionally, Gerber annoys me with her lack of patience and inability to be calm in certain situations, and I was downright disappointed when, near the very end of their sojourn she and Joe duck out of a holiday concert in a church to eat dinner at McDonald's; but it's impossible to be annoyed for very long: I feel an instant kinship with anyone who writes, "Being here [Fiesole] is the single overwhelming attraction of Italy -- to be able to say to oneself: I am in Italy. This is Italian grass, above us is Italian sky, the quality of light is Italian" and, after visiting a friend who lives in the country, "The most ordinary matters of Italian life seem to me, at times, the most desirable, the most perfect forms of existence. To think that Italians take these daily moments for granted, to know that such scenes and scents and tastes are their due, is an astonishment to me. Is heaven only heaven when you may not have it?" and, "In one way or another, joy has been inescapable here." Lastly, I am envious that she frequented the Harold Acton Library of the British Institute of Florence (I keep meaning to get there but just haven't done it yet) and I love when she relates that she notices a copy of Jane Eyre on one of the shelves. "How astonishing that this forgotten tale still lives in me like my own heart. I lean back and close my eyes, thinking of all the books that reside in me that I can enter at will, thinking of all the journeys I have taken between the covers of books."

Cooking with Italian Grandmothers: Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicily by Jessica Theroux, introduction by Alice Waters (Welcome Books, 2010). "La cucina e per passione" (the kitchen is for passion) is just one of a number of memorable maxims in this definitive, authoritative book (another that I really like is "Ricotta non e formaggio. Ricotta e ricotta" (Ricotta is not cheese. Ricotta is ricotta). As the title indicates, this is much, much more than a cookbook -- Theroux's opening line in her Foreword reads, "This is a book about women and food and listening." She relates that her method for finding the twelve women she documents here was simply to fly to Italy with only a few personal contacts as well as some referred by Slow Food, and she trusted she would find what she needed once she arrived. As time passed and she was more confident, she rented rooms and asked around for the names of noted elderly females. "Directions were followed along dirt roads and to front doors, where I introduced myself and my work, and was then warmly welcomed in for the next big meal." Theroux was awarded an Arnold Fellowship by Brown University (where she graduated) to travel to Italy and document food traditions, and this book details the year she spent "cooking, foraging and eating with women in nine of Italy's regions." The regions featured include Lombardia, Piemonte, Liguria, Le Marche, Calabria, and Sicilia, and there are a nonna (grandmother) each from three towns in Toscana, Mary in Arezzo (one of my most favorite Tuscan towns), Bruna from San Casciano in Val di Pesa, and Armida from Fosdinovo in the Lunigiana (no grandmothers from Umbria are featured). As for the recipes, I'm still working my way through them, when I care tear myself away from the stories, but I made the Pappardelle con Sugo di Porcini (I didn't make my own pappardelle but the sauce was really delicious) and Ricotta al Caffe (this might not sound good -- ricotta mixed with caster sugar,, honey, and finely ground Turkish coffee spread on toast -- but it proved to be wildly good) and the Sticky Tomato Frittata, which came out great even with store-bought, out-of-season tasteless tomatoes (remarkable how roasting them actually gives them flavor) but my tomatoes weren't really very sticky. This book is a great gift, for yourself or another Italian enthusiast, and Theroux says her greatest hope is that the book "will encourage you to pay the utmost attention to your life, and in particular to your food and the people around you. What you discover could change your life."

Before I begin a string of posts about all things Tuscan and Umbrian, I have to enthuse right this minute about a wonderfully inspiring book I've just discovered: How to Be An Explorer of the World by Keri Smith (Perigee, 2008). "At any given moment," Smith writes, "no matter where you are, there are hundreds of things around you that are interesting and worth documenting." This is truly a book for anyone of any age who likes to travel or dreams about travel! It's also perfect for anyone who likes art, and indeed the subtitle of the book is 'Portable Art Life Museum' with a strike mark through the word Art, which I think Smith did because she didn't want people to think this was just an art book. And it's not, it really is a life book. I think it's also great for teachers and parents. But mostly, it's great for just about everyone.



There are 13 steps on Smith's list of How to Be an Explorer of the World. Of these, the ones that immediately caught my attention and made me think Smith was a Collected Traveler soulmate are: Always be looking (notice the ground beneath your feet), Everything is interesting (look closer), Observe for long durations (and short ones), Notice the stories going on around you, and Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways.



As readers of my books know, slowing down and really looking is one of my basic tenets of travel, and Smith's book oozes with this idea. I once had to do a project in an Earth Science class many years ago where I had to count every single blade of grass, every pebble or stone, every insect, every leaf, every everything that was inside a one-square-foot wooden frame placed on the ground. It was an eye-opening project -- just think about how many blades of grass are in a one-foot square! -- so I love when Smith asks readers to "write down (or document) fifty things about one of the following: a trip to the library, a trip to the grocery store, a walk in your neighborhood." This is good preparation for a trip anywhere in the world, including somewhere in Tuscany or Umbria: take a seat at a table in a piazza and just look and listen. You may be amazed at what fifty things you observe, and later remember vividly!



"Life is a scavenger hunt," Smith opines, and just a few objects we can collect that help us to document a place are fabric, sugar packages, really tiny things, things on the sidewalk, colors, sticks, seed pods, thread, stickers, maps, fruit stickers, grasses, leaves, spices, and shells. Much as I love a gift from the Farmacia Santa Maria di Novella in Florence (http://www.smnovella.it/ / http://www.lafcony.com/), or a bottle of wine from Lungarotti (http://www.lungarotti.it/) in Umbria, some of my most favorite ricordi (souvenirs) are of the kind listed above. As I type this, I'm looking at one of them, a large, flat, smooth stone from the (rocky) beach at Nice, on the Cote d'Azur. When I look at it, I remember fondly the two weeks I spent there during spring break of 1979, when I lived in Paris. If you arrange the stones just so, you can spread out a towel on top and lie in relative comfort for the entire day, which is what I did nearly everyday with two women I met from the University of Illinois. After the first week, we made a list of the "regulars" at our section of the beach, which included some volleyball players, a drunk, and a scruffy dog (I still have the list). Recently, I became obsessed with recording the colors of what I was looking at on my travels, so I bought a package of watercolor pencils -- these are just like regular colored pencils but when you add a little drop of water, you can create many more shades -- and I try to approximate as best I can the colors around me. When I do this, I notice a lot of things I feel I would otherwise miss, and now that I have Smith's book I'm going to start collecting stuff, too (she provides a page in the book for you to glue in an envelope or plastic bag, which you use to put your findings in). "Expect the unexpected (and you will find it)" as she wisely notes.

As this is a time of year when many of us are thinking about gifts, How to Be an Explorer of the World would make a fine one (and I recommend getting a copy for yourself, too!).

Today, the 12th of October, is my daughter's twelfth birthday, reason enough for celebration. But today is also the day that a wonderful book is being published, Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly (Delacorte). Though I am committed to filing posts about Tuscany and Umbria for the next few months, I am departing today to Paris, the subject of my next book and one of two locales in Revolution (the other is Brooklyn).

Revolution is classified as a young adult novel, but it's one of those books that young and older adults can read with great satisfaction. It's also one of those books that completely envelops you, the kind you can't put down, the kind you can't stop thinking about, the kind that breaks your heart one minute and is hugely redeeming the next. It's a very thought-provoking book, and unique, but the story behind it is also unique, and that's what initially drew me to read the advance reader's copy (known as an ARC in book publishing lingo): Donnelly was reading The New York Times one day and ran across an article entitled 'Geneticists' Latest Probe: The Heart of the Dauphin' which was about the actual heart of Louis-Charles, a son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. I immediately identified Donnelly as a fellow clipper, and since I, too, had cut that article out of the paper and still had it in my files, I figured we were, on some level, soul mates.

I was fortunate to catch up with Donnelly via e-mail before she left for her nationwide tour, including big cities like Seattle, St. Louis, and Chicago and smaller ones like Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Millbrook, New York (check the schedule on Jennifer's website). I was also fortunate to hear Donnelley speak, and she's terrific, so if you can meet her in person it will be a real treat!

Q: What made you clip that article from the paper, and what did you do with it?

Ah, that article. Revolution actually got started ten years ago, although I didn’t know it then. The article showed a picture. Of a glass urn with a small human heart in it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The heart, which had been kept in the Basilica of St. Denis in Paris, had just undergone DNA testing and had been found to be the heart of Louis-Charles. I knew, as most people do, that Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were guillotined during the Revolution. What I didn’t know before I read that article, though, was that after the king and queen were executed, their children – fourteen-year-old Marie-Therese and eight-year-old Louis Charles were kept in prison. Marie-Therese would survive her imprisonment and would be released in 1795, after Robespierre’s reign of terror had ended. Louis-Charles was not so fortunate.

As heir to the throne, the child was seen as a threat to the revolution. It was rumored that powerful people, in France and outside of it, were plotting to free him and rule in his name. To prevent this, Robespierre and his crew essentially had the boy walled up alive. He was kept in a dark cold cell. Alone. Without books and toys. Without enough food, without a fire. He became sick. And he went mad. And eventually he died. At the age of ten.

After Louis-Charles died, in prison, his body was autopsied, and while it was open, one of the officiating doctors, Phillipe-Jean Pelletan, stole the child’s heart. Before the revolution, when a king died, his heart was cut from his body, embalmed, and kept in an urn at St. Denis. During the revolution, this didn’t happen. When Louis XVI was executed, his body was simply thrown into a common pit. It’s thought that Dr. Pelletan stole the heart because he wanted to safeguard it until the revolution was over, then take it to St. Denis. Things didn’t quite work out the way he’d hoped, though. Due to theft, violence, and politics, it took nearly two hundred years for that heart to get to St. Denis. It was finally brought there in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until 1999 that DNA testing confirmed that it did indeed belong to Louis Charles.

The article really upset me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop wondering how the idealism of the revolution had devolved into such cruelty. I went to bed thinking about it and woke up thinking about it. I recognized the feeling – it’s how I feel when a book is starting inside me. But I couldn’t act on it then because I had another book due at the time. The story stayed with me, though. Time moved on. I finished the other book. And I had a child. Which changed my life, as children do, in many wonderful ways.

And in one not so wonderful way – after I had my daughter, I pretty much lost my protective shell. The one we all have. The one that enables us to hear a horrible story on the news and somehow go on with our lives. When my daughter came along, suddenly every story about an abused child, or a child caught up in political violence totally did me in. As a new parent, I knew what a child was in a way that I hadn’t before. I knew how fragile and innocent children are. And to hear that somewhere in the world, a child was starving in a famine, or suffering in a hospital because she was in the wrong place when a bomb went off ... well, I couldn’t understand that and I couldn’t bear it and I wondered, as I never had before, what kind of world is this that allows such things? How do we live in it? How do we raise our children in it?

These questions were haunting me and I had to find answers. So I set about trying to do that the only way I know how: by writing a story. I remembered that article I’d cut out of the Times and I fished it out of its folder. That tiny heart in the glass urn took on a new and symbolic meaning for me. What happened to Louis-Charles was unspeakable, and yet, I felt that if I could face it and grapple with it, I might find my answer.

Q: The main character in the book, Andi Alpers, is working on a thesis about an eighteenth century composer named Amade Malherbeau. Is Malherbeau based on a real composer?

Malherbeau is mostly himself, though he contains a little bit of Mozart and Beethoven, with a touch of Jimmy Page and Jonny Greenwood. I listened to Bach, Handel, Beethoven and Mozart while I worked on the book. And I watched this video of Gustavo Dudamel leading the Gothenburg Symphony over and over again. The gorgeousness of the music, the passion, intensity and joy, the tragedy of Beethoven’s increasing deafness – Dudamel gets it all. In fact, I’m quite certain that at 3.5 minutes, Beethoven has taken up residence in Dudamel’s body, and by 6 minutes, the possession is complete. You have to watch it!

Q: Because I am a traveler who likes to know the stories behind everything I see, and I like to think about how I would act in certain situations in other time periods, I think my most favorite line in the book is when a St. Anselm teacher notes about history, "what you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past." Have you always been drawn to history?

Always. It started when I was little and my mother took me to see the film Mary, Queen of Scots, with Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson. Such drama! Such intrigue! Such gorgeous dresses! I was immediately hooked and have been ever since. One thing I didn’t realize when I was young, and would especially like my younger readers to understand, is that names and dates are only the beginning of the story. History is not only generals and kings and battlefields and acts of parliament and things that happened a long time ago to other people. It’s us. We are the living, breathing result of all the glory and pain and progress and mess that is history.

Andi’s teacher gets across a hugely important point – ask three different people for an account of the same event, and you will get three different accounts. A Paris stonemason might have a very different view of the events of the 1790s than a Paris priest or policeman, or a wealthy merchant, or the queen. I want younger readers to be aware that point of view and politics flavor not only eyewitness accounts of historical events, but also their contemporary interpretations. I want them to ponder history’s stunning complexities – not just cram for Friday’s test – and draw their own conclusions.

Q: Once you decided on the theme and time period for Revolution, and knew you had to do much of your research in Paris, where in the city did your research take you?

Everywhere! To the Archives of the City of Paris. To the catacombs, which was a tough trip because I am claustrophobic, and because they are full of dead people. To the very moving Picpus cemetery, where I saw the original gate through which carts came carrying the headless bodies of victims of the Terror, and the mass graves where they were dumped. To tragically gorgeous Versailles. To the underground kitchens of the Poilane bakery. To the Basilica of St. Denis, where the heart of a young child, and a lost king, now rests.

Q: When you were taking a break from research, what were some of your favorite places?

I never take a break. Sitting in a cafe, or in a garden, eating an apple tart on the banks of the Seine – it’s all research. In the cafe, I listen to the voices and watch the faces and gestures of the people around me and absorb it all. In the courtyard of the Palais Royal, I squint my eyes and look for Orleans’ ghost, or the ghosts of a gaggle of 18th century streetwalkers, an acrobat, a firebreather. Sitting by the Seine, I listen to the sound of the water, and breathe in its smell, and imagine the clopping of horses’ hooves over the bridge, and the creaking of the carriage springs and the flickering of street lamps.

My favorite places are those that allow me to connect very strongly with the past, places like the Picpus Cemetery or the Basilica St. Denis or the Conciergerie. But also butcher shops, because the big, burly ruddy-faced laughing butcher looks to me exactly the same as his 18th century counterpart must’ve looked. Or good bakeries, because they smell wheaty. Or street markets, because the cheeses stink and the cheesemonger is bawdy, and the birds have their feathers on, and the strawberries’ perfume makes you dizzy. I love the statue of Danton at the Carrefour l’Odeon because it is strong and fearsome and so alive, it feels as if it will step down and start bellowing at Robespierre at any second. And the jewel box Sainte-Chapelle with its breathtaking windows.

One of my favorite places is Poilane bakery. I’ve never had such good bread, and such delicious apple tarts, and I never will again until I go back. I’m so greedy, I eat what I buy immediately, right out on the street by the shop. I also love watching the line outside Pierre Hermé’s patisseries, full of devastatingly chic Parisians all waiting to choose a devastatingly chic little cake. And Laduree, with its painted ceiling, and its perfect little macaroons in their perfect little pastel boxes. The French understand the importance of such perfections, and what they do for the soul. And the handsome men in their linen suits behind the tea counter at Mariage Freres.

And as for a hotel, I stay at the Hotel Caron de Beaumarchais because it is charming and pretty and in the Marais.

Q: Your first young adult novel, A Northern Light, was honored with the prestigious Carnegie Medal in Britain, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and the Michael L. Printz Honor Award. The book appears to have been inspired by the real-life story of early 20th century Grace Brown, who was the subject of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Were you in fact as curious about Brown as you were with Louis XVII, and were your adult novels -- The Winter Rose and The Tea Rose -- similarly inspired?

Curious is nowhere near a strong enough word. Obsessed is much closer. I’m driven very much by people and places and periods of time that grab hold of me and won’t let go, and characters who take up residence in my head and won’t leave until I’ve gotten their stories down. In Revolution, the inspiration was the heart and its story. In A Northern Light it was Grace Brown’s letters to her murderer, Chester Gillette. In the Rose books, it was the East End of London. The problem is, these characters don’t willingly relinquish their stories. It takes a great deal of time to understand people like Andi and Alex, the main characters in Revolution, or Mattie Gokey, or India Selwyn Jones, and to do them justice.

Q: Are you working on a new book now?

Right now I’m finishing up the third and final Rose book – The Wild Rose – and then after my book tour for Revolution, I will return to my desk and my pot of tea, and start in on a new young adult novel.

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For another great interview with Donnelly, go to Random Acts of Reading, a good site to know about in general. In this interview, I particularly liked reading more about how she spent her time in Paris; but in it also she named some writers that have inspired her over the years, including James Joyce, Jeanette Winterson, Madeleine L'Engle, Stephen King, Colleen McCullough, Simon Schama, Laura Ingalls Wilder, A. S. Byatt, Meg Rosoff, Dante, E. B. White, Philip Pullman, Emily Dickinson, and the Brothers Grimm. She added that "When I was trying to write my first book, I didn't have the money to go to grad school, or the time to join writers' groups, but I had authors and their books. Everyone does. Open a book by Joyce or Greene, open a volume of poetry by Dickinson, and you've got a masterclass in writing, right there in front of you."

And on that very wise and veritable thought, I will close this post, but not before saying, read this beautifully written book!

My new book on Tuscany and Umbria is out! I replaced the great photo of the Istiklal Caddesi in Istanbul -- to the right of this post -- with one taken from the Torre di Bellosguardo, up the hill from the Porta Romana in Florence (both photos were taken by the wonderful photographer Peggy Harrison). Peggy is particularly fond of taking photos in the early morning hours in many locations because she says the light then is unique. I think you'll agree -- the shades of blue in her photo are not those normally associated with Florence, and I guess you have to get up pretty early to see them! In addition to the colors, what I also really like about this photo is that it reminds me of a passage in a lovely book by Marina Belozerskaya, The Arts of Tuscany: From the Etruscans to Ferragama (Abrams, 2008): the "links between man and nature, city and countryside, natural and man-made creations have always remained intimate in Tuscany, and endlessly generative. The countryside is what Tuscans see just beyond their city walls, traverse as they go to the next town, or look forward to visiting on the weekend." When you are at Bellosguardo -- looking out at the panorama from the garden or from the second-floor veranda -- you see clearly that the city of Florence is encircled by green hills. There is a marked boundary between city and country. If this were a North American city, there would likely be no end in sight of the surrounding sprawl.

The photos here in this posting were also taken by Peggy, also at Bellosguardo ("beautiful view"), which I daydream about almost daily. You can read more about this very special hotel in my book (and its website is http://www.torrebellosguardo.com/), but an important note about it is that the view of Florence from up here is astonishing, taking in every single Florentine monument, and it is without doubt the very best view of the city anywhere -- you will read often that the best view is from piazzale Michelangelo, but trust me, the piazzale isn't even a contender.

I share a number of other favorite places to stay in Tuscany and Umbria in my book, as well as my favorite hotel specialty groups (notably Abitare la Storia, http://www.abitarelastoria.it/) and the accommodation resources I regularly consult. One resource that has just been published -- but didn't make it into my book -- is For the Love of Italy: Rural Pleasures and Hotel Estates by Marella Caracciolo (with photographs by Oberto Gili, Clarkson Potter, 2010). Caracciolo was Italian editor at House and Garden for a dozen years and writes regularly for W and World of Interiors, and she and her husband, the artist Sandro Chia, renovated the wine estate Castello Romitorio (www.castelloromitorio.com/en/index.html), which overlooks the Val d'Orcia in southeastern Tuscany and is very near Montalcino (it's also featured in the book). The Castello produces some noteworthy wines (all red with the exception of one white, a blend of 20% Chardonnay and 80% Vermentino) including its Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2004 (the year of an exceptional harvest), which is only the third Riserva from the estate (the previous Riserva releases were in 1999 and 1997, a Wine Spectator Top 50 Wines of the year). Sandro Chia acquired the Castello in 1984 -- in a nice association with my previous paragraphs, it was owned previously by Baron Giorgio Franchetti, who owned Torre di Bellosguardo until the years following World War II -- and the Castello's original structure dates from the 1300s and was constructed as a fortress to defend the city of Montalcino. Not only is the Castello Romitorio of interest to those who love the fruit of the vine (the tasting room is open Monday through Friday by reservation only: (39) 0577.847.212) but there are two villas on the grounds of the estate that are available for rent: Poggio di Sopra in Montalcino and Podere Biancanelle, set on a hill in the Maremma only 20 kilometers from the Tyrrhenian Sea coast.

For the Love of Italy is not, as Carraciola notes in her introduction, an objective book. The featured accommodations reflect her "subjective choices for the prettiest rural Italian farms at which travelers can stay," and they're places that photographer Gili likes too ("most editors who have worked with Oberto know that it is quite pointless to ask him to photograph places that don't attract him. He won't."). The author-photographer team looked for agriturismi that are run well and where visitors can learn about rural Italian life, places that are "not too large, not too famous, extremely hospitable, and..photogenic." And wow, are these places great: I think you will, like me, want to stay at so many of these. I am familiar with a number of these (notably La Foce, Don Alfonoso, Regaleali, La Montecchia) but happily many are new, and there are listings for northern Italy southern Italy and Sicily; a separate chapter just on Tuscany; and another that features Umbria, the Marche, Lazio, and Abruzzo. I really like that signature products -- such as olive oil, wine, pasta, nuts, truffles, meats, fruits, honey, grappa, etc. -- produced on each estate are mentioned.

The last 16 pages of the book are dedicated to useful websites for planning a trip in rural Italy and an insider's guide, which is "the fruit of an intense collaboration and word-of-mouth research among journalists, writers, farmers, and friends, both Italian and foreign, who know Italy well and have traveled extensively throughout the country. Despite the rising success of rural hospitality, it is difficult to find a reliable guide to it. This list will not fill the gap." It is, however, incredibly useful, and in addition to the contact information for the places featured in the book there are 63 recommendations for Tuscany and ten for Umbria, making this worthy of perusal even if you never set foot in any other part of Italy. The book is really a celebration of the countryside of Italy and the farm-to-table movement, and though often the price of staying at an agriturismo property is less expensive than staying at an urban hotel, "this is not why people choose to travel this way" says Caracciolo. "What they are looking for is an experience. Living on a family-run farm, eating and drinking the produce of the land, makes people feel anchored to the territory and to the culture of the place. They are tuning into something authentic."

For the Love of Italy is an expensive ($60), fully illustrated book, which you can obviously check out of your local library; but it's also a book that may be used as a great resource for Italian country design and decor ideas, and for regular visitors to Italy it's one I would add to the essenziale shelf.