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Each time I travel, I try to read as much as possible about my destination. In 2008, when I went to Rome and Florence, with a week stay at a villa in Tuscany to celebrate Nancy Suib's 60th birthday, I read a biography of Lorenzo di Medici, a book about the building of St. Peter's basilica, and of course, Under the Tuscan Sun, all the rage at that time. I had to put down Tuscan Sun halfway through. I was too envious. The writer's villa was too beautiful, her study on the ancient Etruscan ruins found on her property too interesting, her income (even after a divorce) too lavish, and her random meeting of the perfect lover too fortunate. Ick!
The memoir I chose this time, Aegean Dream, by Dario Ciriella, turned out to be bittersweet. Same theme: a likeable American couple from California, sick of the rat-race, decided to take a flier and move to a Greek island which they had visited a few times before. The impossible dream: they hoped to make a living there. It sounded doable at first; she was a craftsperson who wanted to make decorative soaps out of local ingredients and sell them to tourists, and he had an online computer business which he could run from anywhere there was wifi. But they were up against a foe mightier than they ever imagined; the grinding inefficiency of the Greek bureaucracy, and pervasive corruption of petty officials. (You get an up-close, quotidian view of the conditions that set Greece up for a major economic crash.) After a year of work and worry, they had to bag it and return home. In the meantime, they made wonderful friends and had memorable experiences all the more precious for their brevity. The takeaway: if you decide you want to move to a foreign clime, either a) be very young and adventurous, or 2) have a pile of money already.
Another great non-fiction choice was The Find of a Lifetime: Sir Arthur Evans and the Discovery of Knossos, by Sylvia Horwitz. In the year 1900, the London newspapers were full of the day-by-day unearthing of a civilization hardly dreamed-of before. A small, eccentric, very-rich British genius named Arthur Evans had unearthed the legendary labyrinth where King Minos of Crete, hid his monstrous stepson, the Minotaur. This Bronze-Age culture that Evans called Minoan dominated the seas from 3500 to 1100 B.C. surviving earthquakes and the volcanic eruption that formed the modern day island of Santorini. Mostly, the book was a story about Evans, who was a Victorian piece of work, a tiny, nearsighted dynamo who was bushwacking in rural Crete into his 80s. Very entertaining. I can't wait to see Knossos again!
Now for the most fun of all! I reintroduced myself to The King Must Die and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea, by Mary Renault. I have never read better historical novels, with the possible exception of Hilary Mantell's stories of Tudor England. These two books tell of the life of the mythical hero, Theseus, who saved the girls and boys of Athens by going with them to Knossos to be devoured by the Minotaur, only to turn the tables on Minos. He returned to Athens to rule for many years, having further wonderful adventures before yielding his life to the sea on Skyros. This book had everything: hand-to-hand combat, blood sacrifice, warrior maidens, cannabalism, rape, incest, earthquakes, eruptions, shipwrecks, evil giants, sexual abuse and tender love stories-- all made totally real by Renault's inimitable wriitng. Each book was like a shot of ouzo, taken fast and straight. Burned all the way down! But most interesting to me was the pagan religiosity of the culture, which presented Theseus's contemporaries with a sophisticated morality as valid as our own, if not more so. I cannot recommend these books highly enough. Wow, now I have to choose some chick lit for my overseas flight, or I'll never sleep!
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liz Wonderful thus far, Liz Can't wait to hear more. Wish I could be traveling with you both. XOX