Rainy Day Reads

I read this as my “Modern Translated Fiction” entry for my bingo reading challenge this year, because I’ve heard so many good things about it.   The book is the first in a series called “The Neapolitan Novels” and it details the childhood and early adolescent of a young girl in 1950s Naples, Italy. I have the feeling that this book is supposed to be autobiographical, but I can’t say if that is true or not. It is told in the first person, so that certainly lends the story the feeling of autobiography.  The story starts with two young girls, the narrator Elena and Lila, becoming friends. We follow their life in a poor neighborhood in the city and their struggles to follow their dreams. The girls both have ambitions to do well in school and bring their families out of poverty one way or another. While Elena manages to fight her way through school, Lila has to leave school to help her family make money. We then follow the girls as they grow into teenagers and as th...

I love Italy. Back in 2005 I spent 4 weeks Interrailing down the country with a good friend of mine. I remember that time as filled with sunshine, amazing sights and lots of gelato. I also remember long train rides, sweating profusely in the summer heat and constantly being stressed out about finding the next hostel. But let’s not dwell on that bit! During this epic trip we went to Venice for a day. We squeezed it in between an early morning train from Milan and a late train to Bologna. We decided to do it like this because we had heard that Venice would be quite expensive, but we didn’t want to miss it. And I do feel like we made the most of our day there.  We went to Piazza San Marco to look at St Mark’s Basilica. This cathedral was first built in 828 AD to house the supposed relics of Mark the Evangelist. In 978 the church was restored or rebuilt after a fire, but the oldest parts of the present church probably date to 1063. The building style is Byzantine with fe...

In 2005 I was Interrailing through Western Europe, and my friend and I dedicated almost an entire month to Italy. We had both studied Italian for 3 years in high school, so this was a good opportunity to practice the language and soak up some of the culture and history first hand.   During the trip we went to Sicily, and no trip to this island is complete without a visit to Mount Etna, the volcano that watches over the area. We went on a guided tour that included the bus trip and two guides to show us around. We drove up as far as we could, but then we hiked the rest of the way. This was pretty physically demanding, as far as I remember, as it was very hot, the terrain was steep and the ground consisted of soft, black volcanic sand that you sank into, making it arduous to walk. We hiked as far as a lookout point over a lava valley, where the view consisted of black sand and lava formations. Coming back down we visited a cave, where lava runs through each time the volcano erupt...