Lost and Found in Florence
Hi from Florence*, where I am a little hungover, and just back from retrieving myself an excellent oat milk latte (via the very good coffee shop Ditta Artiginale, where I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of dairy alternatives on offer until I saw they also had “cruffins” available, imagine!). I was walking back to my hotel in the rain, dodging the lines for those famous sandwiches and the Uffizi gallery and actively trying to not look at my Maps app and experienced that glorious feeling you get when you’re traveling for a few days and finally the layout of where you’re staying becomes mentally available to you. The best way I can describe it is sort of a clicking into place**: Suddenly you know where you are. (Or you have a good enough idea.) It is sort of internal and automatic and private and slightly victorious. It might be my favorite feeling.
That said, the jet lag (9 hours ahead, woof) and however-much-of-that-bottle-of-red-wine I had last night does have me feeling like I got smashed over the head with a 2x4. So I’m going to keep this brief and book related this week. Here are three I roundly recommend for wherever your holidays may take you, as a good book is the best travel company, even if you’re just moseying across the room.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow By Gabrielle Zevin
I read this book over the summer intending to take it with me to the beach over several days. Once I picked it up I don’t think I put it down, barring meals and the occasional ocean dip. It’s sweet and long and great and sad and beautiful, like life sometimes. It’s about friendship and love and art and video games and the people who make them, as they move between Cambridge, MA and L.A. (both of which are depicted accurately, which I always appreciate). I would have a hard time imagining someone who wouldn’t enjoy reading it.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
I read this in galley version and devoured it in like, an hour. Adored it. Ignore the cover which I find to be rather awful. A chemist in the 1960s becomes an unlikely television star, among other plots. It’s a delight. There is also a wonderful dog, named Six-Thirty, which is something I wish I’d thought of first.
This book is very clever. Sometimes maybe too clever. But it’s also wickedly funny and totally bizarre. (Both compliments, in my book!) It took me a minute to get into (there’s a lot of intentionally brain-wringing discussions of mathematical theorems) but once I did I found I really enjoyed it. This review does it justice, I think, certainly more than I am currently mentally able to.
That’s all I got this time around! Next week there will be more, I hope, or at least I’ll be fortified by some time spent in Tuscany, which, in my humble opinion, absolutely never hurts. Anyways: thanks for being here. I love you.
*Florence, Italy, not Florence, Alabama, a distinction that I make because I have also been to and loved the latter, which I visited for one of Billy Reid’s annual shindigs, and which served as the location of many memorable firsts, including my first ever Frito Pie (consumed in the stands of a baseball game in which Jack White’s team, the Warstic Woodmen, played Billy’s) and visit to Muscle Shoals, as well as my introduction to the excellent and excellently named band Drivin N Cryin, as well as the fabulous Margo Price, who has a memoir out that I intend to look at soon! I remain fans of all of the above, including Frito Pie (aka “a taco in a bag”), but perhaps especially Florence, the town. If you ever find yourself nearby, make a point to check it out.
**I love this Radiolab episode about this whole idea. Never not a treat to hear from the late great Oliver Sacks!