Have you ever read Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffanys? It's a wonderful story. Slightly different than the movie version, but equally as good (maybe even better as is so often the case). Holly Golightly is the quintessential girl about town looking for love and success in her own eccentric way. Despite the shiny party-girl veneer about her there is a sadness that lies beneath. She doesn't just have the occasional blues--which is your common garden variety of bad day happenings, rather she has the mean reds. Lately I think I've been having a case of the mean reds myself (ie my black mood). I think my problem is that I am in a rut. One so deep I don't know how to get out and am feeling so claustrophobic that even my books aren't keeping me from wanting to climb the walls to get out. Only at the moment there's nowhere to go. So you'll have to excuse my occasional moody posts as I try and work my way out of this moodiness and decide what exactly I want to do with my life and how I am going to get there.
Books do help, despite it all. Lately I just can't seem to focus on one for too long, so my reading pile is a little taller than usual (is that possible?). And as you can see I have a few new books to add to it. Do you see a trend here (see photo)? I want to learn to speak Italian, only I can't find anywhere in town that offers lessons. I don't think I have the dedication to try and do it on my own with a book and tapes--for me that loses some of the fun of the process. I've picked up La Bella Lingua by Dianne Hales, subtitle: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language, as the next best thing (for the moment anyway). It only came in the mail yesterday, so I've only just started reading and will let you know how it goes.
Along with that the box contained 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go by Susan Van Allen. Now that's quite a tall order, but one I will happily fulfill given the time and money. Until then I guess I'll just read about those places. And thanks to someone's wonderful suggestion (sorry I need to go back through the comments to remind myself who) I also ordered War in Val D'Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-1944. It was written by an American woman who had married an Italian and was living and raising her family in Tuscany during the war.
And a few other recent finds. I've been wondering lately if with so few bookstores around these days whether I'll have to start book shopping at the supermarket. It sounds a little funny, but that is where I picked up Juliet by Anne Fortier. I always look at their book racks but never find anything I'd like to read, so this was a pleasant surprise. It's one of those parallel stories novels set in contemporary Virginia and Italy as well as medieval Siena. It is a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and it is a thriller. That should make for interesting reading, but I'm open to just about anything that's set in Italy lately. I think I already mentioned Lucretia Grindle's Villa Triste--it's here! This is a mystery that reaches back to Italy's WWII past about two sisters who were involved in the Resistance. And last but not least is Carlo Lucarelli's Carte Blanche, in a lovely Europa Editions edition. It is the first in the "De Luca Trilogy"--yet more Italian crime, and this one set directly during WWII.
The point of this post was meant to be a short rundown of a few of the books I'm reading at the moment, but now I've run out of steam. I will mention two in any case, both novels by Italian authors (how could I stray at this point?). I'm nearly finished with Carlo Lucarelli's Almost Blue, a mystery featuring Grazia Negro who is tracking down a serial killer in Bologna. It's an unusual mystery and one I am enjoying very much, which includes a character who is blind yet associates voices with colors--very interesting. I'm also reading away on Elsa Morante's History. This is a chunky doorstop of a book about one average woman during the war who happens to be half-Jewish and terrified of being caught out and then is raped by a German soldier. It was a slow starter but the more I read the better it gets--and hopefully it will continue to be so.