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One Italian Summer by Pip WilliamsBook Annotation Pip and Shannon dreamed of living the good life. They wanted to slow down, grow their own food, and spend more time with the people they love. But jobs and responsibilities got in the way: their chooks died, their fruit rotted, and Pip ended up depressed and in therapy. So they did the only reasonable thing - they quit their jobs, pulled the children out of school and went searching for la dolce vita in Italy. One Italian Summer is a warm, funny and often poignant story of a family's search for a better way of living in the homes and on the farms of strangers. Pip sleeps in a woodshed, feasts under a Tuscan sun, works like a tractor in Calabria and, eventually, finds her dream - though it's not at all the one she expected.
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| The Monk of Mokha by Dave EggersStarring: Mokhtar Alkhanshali, who grew up in San Francisco's notorious Tenderloin district, lived with his grandparents in Yemen for a while as a teen, and then moved back to the U.S. and made a career in his twenties importing Yemeni coffee. Then, a 2015 civil war left Mokhtar stranded in Yemen, trying to get home via any path he could.
For fans of: Dave Eggers, of course, but also coffee lovers and fans of Ian Purkayastha's Truffle Boy, another fascinating book about a globe-trotting, gourmet food-importing son of an immigrant. |
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| Dressed Up for a Riot: Misadventures in Putin's Moscow by Michael IdovWhat it is: a witty, pop culture-infused look at modern Russia. Recounting his experiences as editor-in-chief of Russian GQ from 2012-2014 and as a successful screenwriter, American Michael Idov also describes moving his young family to Moscow, hanging with the media and cultural elite, and watching freedoms fade under Putin.
About the author: Idov grew up in a Jewish family in Soviet Latvia until age 16, giving him a unique and insightful perspective.
What you should read next: Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible, which covers the decade prior to Idov's book. |
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What happens in Bali
by Richard Shears
It is known as the Island of Gods - and what happens in Bali might leave the spiritual guardians of this dreamy holiday destination weeping tears of dismay or gazing down with contentment that all is well in this Hindu domain. These are the events that made headlines around the world, or which were quietly played out behind a veil of tropical serenity. More than four million tourists, both rich and budget-conscious, visit the island each year; it is inevitable that things go wrong. Drugs, surfing, murder, love, death on the roads, hangovers, bombs, relaxation ... they are all part of a cocktail of life in a land of looming volcanoes, hillside rice paddies and idyllic beaches.
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Greece : A Literary Guide for Travellers by Michael CarrollThis small, rugged, sea-girt country has the longest written history in Europe. Her myths and legends, so deeply embedded in Western consciousness, and her sublime landscapes, so infused with history, have been muse for writers, artists and travellers for millennia. Travelling from Athens to the scattered islands of the Ionian and Aegean seas, the words of literary titans echo through the centuries: from Homer and Plato to Byron, Flaubert and Twain; Henry Miller to John Fowles; the Durrells to Patrick Leigh Fermor and Cavafy, Kazantzakis and Seferis. Their luminous portraits of Greece -- poignant, provocative, always entertaining -- enrich our own experiences of the country and shed light on a dramatic and often tragic past.
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The Hebrides
by Paul Murton
Paul Murton has spent half a lifetime exploring some of the most beautiful islands in the world - the Hebrides. He has travelled the length and breadth of the Scotland's rugged, six-thousand-mile coast line, and sailed to over eighty islands. In this book Paul visits each of the Hebridean islands in turn, introducing their myths and legends, history, culture, and extraordinary natural beauty. He also meets the people who live there and learns their story. He has met crofters, fishermen, tweed weavers, Gaelic singers, clan chiefs, artists, postmen and bus drivers - people from every walk of life who make the islands tick. This blend of the contemporary and the traditional creates a vivid account of the Hebrides and serves as unique guide to the less well-known aspects of life among the islands.
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