Book after Book

Welcome back to Blind Date With a Book Thursday… even if it’s Friday morning! Thank you all for joining in the fun and sharing your guesses on Twitter or on the blog. I hope you enjoyed yourselves! A quick look at the clues: I was published in 2011 I am a debut novel I was written by a female American writer I am set in Italy, mainly in Bologna I am a romantic at heart With a failed marriage behind her, my female main character at first can't wait to leave Italy My male main character is a true knight in shining armour I don't think train strikes are always a bad thing! Any last-minute guesses? No? Ok, here we go… This week’s book was… Ask Me if I'm Happy by Kimberly Menozzi. I loved this book when I first read it in 2011. You can find my review here and - if you click on the 'Kimberly Menozzi' label, you will also find all the lovely posts written by the author for this blog. I hope to see you next week for some more fun!

Did you miss Kimberly's monthly feature in April? I know I did. Here, all the way from the States, is a new piece by one of our favourite writers, who's remembered about us even when she has more important matters to think about! Please join me in thanking her and wishing her mother well. ** For many writers, one of the hardest things to manage is time . Finding the time to write is one of the first obstacles presented to anyone who fancies the notion of being a working writer. Different writers go about this in different ways - some write during any free moment they find throughout the day, others write early in the morning before their families wake up, still others wait and write late at night. A handful of writers like myself are very fortunate and are able to write throughout the day. I work part time for a language school and have an office in my flat in my home in Italy. The computer is primarily for my use - my husband has his own laptop for his computer needs - and in ...

How many times do we, as writers, get an idea and discard it because we don't think anyone else will love it as much as we do? I'm sure it happens more often than we'd care to admit. As writers, we want to believe that we're devoted to the ideas which come to us, that we'll fight for our right to tell any story, any time. However, I suspect there are many stories which don't see the light of day thanks to a fear that they might not be able to find an audience, or that we won't be able to do the story justice. I know I have set aside more than one novel in progress because I lost the passion for the story. I've stopped writing stories because they suddenly didn't feel right, or because I felt no-one would be interested by the time I finished it. And then, there was one I didn't even begin because I feared it would be a waste of time in spite of my excitement for it. All the same, it wouldn't leave me alone, and kept knocking at the door of my...

When it comes to writing, there are certain axioms writers (and many readers) know very well. A particularly vexing one is this: Write what you know. Unfortunately, this phrase is open to interpretation as well as misunderstanding, so every writer's mileage may vary wildly. I confess that it plagued me for years and made it hard for me to get down to the nitty-gritty of what I wanted to write about. "Write what you know." Ugh. Why did this trouble me so? It troubled me because I was a teenager when I first wanted to write for a living, and as such, I had lived a fairly "ordinary" life. Nothing exceptional had ever happened to me. If I wanted to write about the life of a rock-and-roll musician, this so-called logic dictated that I didn't know enough about it to do so. Nor could I write about being a mother (no kids), or being a sex object (soooo not me!) or a pilot, or anything else which came to mind. I read the work of Hemingway (in school - Old Man and the...

If I say to someone back home in the US that my day job is working as an English teacher, certain expectations might leap to mind. For instance, they might picture a room with neat and orderly rows of desks with young children or teenagers seated in them, either a chalkboard or whiteboard on the wall, perhaps even a bell which rings to denote the start and end of a lesson. While this is not too far off the mark for some teachers, for me, it's almost completely wrong. I teach English as a Second Language (ESL) here in Italy – and most of my students haven't been teenagers, much less children, for a good long while. I don't have a classroom filled with desks, or a bell to tell me when to start and/or stop the lesson. The only times I get to use a whiteboard are when I'm teaching at the school itself – and sometimes not even then. Instead, I get to travel (in my case, this means walk ) around the city, visiting different offices for an array of businesses including banks a...

It's December and here you will find the last instalment in the Senza Ali e Senza Rete series, our monthly piece of Italy as kindly offered by author Kimberly Menozzi . I don't know about you, but I will definitely miss this appointment on the 22nd of every month... My letter to Santa included a whole new series of exclusive guest blogs penned by Mrs Menozzi. Will my wish be granted? We can only wait and see... In the meantime, please let Kimberly feel your love by leaving a comment below! December 23rd, 2003 I am finally here. My plane lands in darkness, the runway lights looking hazy in the light fog, and I sit quietly in my assigned seat wondering: What happens now? What lies ahead of me? I wait for everyone around me to gather their things before I stand and get my own bag from the overhead compartment. I look out the windows as I walk to the doors and take a deep breath when I reach the metal stairs there. I am shaking. I haven't seen him in nearly four months. I gras...

Yesterday, my husband, Alle, and I accompanied his sister and her family and another friend for lunch in le colline di Canossa , the foothills of the Apennine mountains which surround the Canossa castles in the Reggio Emilia province. We left home around 11:30, under grey and gloomy skies, with a mist drifting around the tops of the palazzi of our neighborhood. As we drove out toward the hills, Alle and I chatted about the scenery, how nice it was that the colors of the trees had turned and not fallen immediately, and how I am strangely appreciative of the grey, cold weather. As we approached Puianello, the fog began to break and allow the first hints of sun to shine through. We drove on through the outskirts of the town where a small market was open for the coming holidays. It seemed that everyone for miles around was coming to sample the wares on offer, but we continued on our way, following his brother-in-law's car as it bypassed the town, continuing for the hills. Soon enough,...

I woke up last Monday determined to take a bike ride. The sky was clear and bright, a deep autumnal blue freshened by the chilly winds which have finally arrived after a prolonged delay. It wasn't too cold, but it was cool enough to reassure me I wouldn't suffer too badly. I could wear long sleeves to protect my skin from the sun and have a nice, leisurely ride along the path on the torrente which runs just outside of town. This was something I'd longed to do all summer while I was visiting family in the US, something I've looked forward to since I returned to Italy in September, but put off thanks to the unseasonable, overbearing heat and humidity. Now was my chance. I saw my husband off to work and then set about getting ready. I dressed in my workout gear (long-sleeved lycra workout top, hoodie, an old pair of jeans and some trainers) and went down to the garage where we keep the bikes. Our garage is an entity unto itself – a hodgepodge of bicycles, hardware left ov...

To my initial dismay, September arrived late, this year. The blessedly cool air -- which normally follows close after my return to Italy from the US -- took its time, this time around. This year, it almost felt like the cool weather would never arrive. This struck a chord of fear within me, foolish as it sounds, but I really was worried for a while. I worried most when the heat had me up in the wee still hours of the night, unable to sleep but too tired to do anything productive. You see, I've never dealt well with heat and humidity. Either one is a problem for me, particularly at night, but heat is probably the worst. I get rashes on my skin; itchy, flaky, painful rashes. I toss and turn when it's too warm, unable to keep cool so I can rest well. We've all been there, of course -- but to go from an air-conditioned environment over the course of the summer to a more, shall we say "natural" existence, was a bit of a shock for me. I spent several sleepless nights th...

It's still August, but already I find myself thinking ahead. Autumn is coming soon, bringing with it longer, cooler nights, brisk and breezy days, and skies of moody, mottled grey or the clearest blue one can imagine. Unfortunately in Italy – at least in the part where I now live – autumn is quick to pass. I sometimes joke that no sooner have a few leaves turned color than they're being blown about by the wind or steeping in a rainwater brew on the sides of the road. Here and then gone in what feels like an instant. Along with winter, this is my favorite season. One of the things I love most is how the sounds of everyday life change. With the crisp, fresher air everything resounds somehow sharper and more clearly than just a few weeks – or even days – before. What was once humid and distant is now close by. What was muffled and hazy has become familiar and vivid once more. Darkness falls early and the church bells ring deeper and deeper in the night even though their appointed ...

As one might suspect, family dinners are a huge part of my Italian life. These happen an almost-monthly basis, marking the important events on the family calendar: holidays, birthdays and the occasional "Just Because" meetings. In the last eight years, there are certain things I have come to expect and look forward to each time we meet. A typical dinner usually goes like this: Unless there is a storm of some kind, my husband, Alle and I walk the three or four blocks to his father, Paolo's place. I enjoy this most in autumn or winter, my favorite seasons, as the quiet and calm of our neighborhood is especially noticeable then. A walk in the cold tends to increase the appetite, after all – and it keeps the bottle of wine we bring along that much colder, too. When we arrive at the palazzo , we call on the citofono to let him know we're there. He buzzes the door open and we take the elevator up to the top floor, where the door to Paolo's flat is already open, waiting...

The only time my life in Italy seems to come close to the usual images most people have of it is in the summer. Though I spend most summers away – my teaching work ends for the season and I usually go to the US to visit my family – I still carry the memories of the summers I've spent in Italy. One memory in particular stands out: One a.m. on a mid-summer night. I lay sprawled atop the bed, alone. My husband was asleep in our other bedroom because his proximity in our bed seemed to increase the temperature of the room. The heat was too intense, the fan blowing on me providing precious little relief from the all-enveloping warmth. The zanzare – the mosquitoes – tormented me, buzzing past my ears whenever sleep beckoned, alighting on my too-sensitive, exposed skin until I was forced to take shelter beneath a bed sheet in spite of the heat. Facing toward the wide-open window, desperate for some sort of breeze, I found myself distracted anew. A bright light shone in my direction in spit...

There are many things to adjust to when you move abroad. Most of these things I was prepared for: different food, different clothing styles and of course, a different language. There was, however, something I wasn't ready for at all in Italy: a different way of being "on time". I don't mean the way we say the time - although, in some ways, that's different, too - no, I mean the idea of when to show up for something, such as when to arrive for a party, a meeting, a dinner with friends or a walk around town. I'm an American, of course, and so I'm generally used to being on time for things. I can't stand being late (that's not because I'm American, that's just because I'm, well, me ), and I always do my best to be on time or even early when possible. But in Italy, somehow it never quite works out that way. Here's an example: You tell a friend "Let's meet at my house at eight and we'll go to dinner," and they say ...

I love bicycles. I've had them all my life, and I have one now - a Legnano city bike, a simple one-speed with handbrakes, which I ride to work when I have to teach in the mornings. My hubby bought it for me in 2004, shortly after I arrived in Italy and we married. I remember walking that bike home with my hubby (it wouldn't be fair to ride it when he didn't have one with him), feeling anxious and excited in a way I hadn't felt in years. I love my bike, and I love my hubby's Masi racing bike which he's had since a long time before we met. I love the zing-zing of the bell when someone needs to pass, and the soft hum of the tires on the pavement. I love the jostling clatter of the frame when a bike hits a bump in the road, and the slowing whirr as the brakes are applied. I love Italy's understanding of the needs of cyclists. I love the well-maintained cycling paths which were added when the city upgraded the phone and internet lines through the town. I love the...

It's inevitable. There are certain questions every writer is asked throughout their career, and this is one of the most persistent: "Is the book autobiographical?" Since Ask Me if I'm Happy 's release, I've already been asked that question more times than I'd ever dreamed would be possible. The answer is always a kindly-delivered but emphatic "No," and most folks are satisfied with that. However, some aren't, and they persist, delivering a variation on that theme: "How much of you is in the book, then?" This is where it gets tricky for me, because the answer is "None," and the answer is also "All of me." Many writers will say the same, or something similar, so I know I'm not alone. Every character in every book I write has some part of me in them. I don't mean this in a completely literal sense, of course – it's not that I've assigned some of my own traits to every character that crosses the page....

By Kimberly Menozzi While organising the “Italy in Books” reading challenge, someone on Twitter suggested that I read Ask Me If I’m Happy , debut novel of American-born Kimberly Menozzi. Curious, I started reading her blog and I was instantly hooked on her fresh and witty writing style. So much, in fact, that I just had to invite her to be a guest blogger on Book After Book ! It was with trepidation that this month I picked up my copy of Ask Me If I’m Happy and started reading. Having developed great expectations, I was concerned that I might end up being disappointed. I’m glad to report that I needn’t have worried! Ask Me If I’m Happy opens on the last day that Emily Miller ever intends to spend in Italy. Following a whirlwind romance and an excruciatingly difficult marriage with Italian playboy Jacopo, she is looking forward to leaving her adoptive country behind and starting afresh in America. Italian train strikes, however, are unforgiving and Emily finds herself stranded in Bol...

It's been one of the most difficult things to get used to, here. Having been raised in the suburbs outside of a smaller town in the United States (not an urban upbringing by any stretch of the imagination), I'm accustomed to a postal service which leaves mail in a mailbox alongside the road in front of my house, or even, when the occasion calls for it, places a package on the front porch or by my front door for me to find when I return home. Nothing could have prepared me for the row of mailboxes on the wall outside the main doors of the palazzo where I now live, or for the ringing of my rather alarming doorbell which brings to mind the change of classes in my high school days. How many times have I been startled by a prolonged, startling ring of that bell, which scares the cat and shakes me with the sudden unexpectedness of it? Alternatively, how do they time it so perfectly to catch me at the most inconvenient time possible? Are they spying on me? Does my doorbell have a hi...