The Italian Summer: Roland Merullo

Just finished up this quick and fun read. I picked it up at the library the other day, it was in the Italian
travel section. I read that back cover and it seemed interesting enough. 

I liked it. The author was very descriptive and I love his storied about the Italian food and there little trips around Lake Como. Lake Como is in northern Italian, and we haven't been farther north than Rome so it was interesting and fun to read about some of the customs, traditions and food of the north. I look forward to visiting at some point. They got to drive by the place that Mussolini was shot and see the place that his body was hung in the square. Like I said, I'm excited to visit someday. 

There was a little too much golf talk. I am not a golfer but my dad and brother are so I understood the golf terms but it was still a little much for me. There were multiple chapters where he went into extensive detail about his golf games and matches. Some of the andantes where clever and funny about golfing. But like I said, a little too much still. 

Favorite Quotes from the book:

"I thought about how families open themselves to include outsiders or have difficulty doing that; how the bonds that link them are stretched and broken by distance and politics and faith and time, or reinforced by regular meals and a shared passion." 

"It is foolish to romanticize that past. Mostly likely, the stone alleyways outside the apartment - they seemed so charming - were at one time a septic mess of horse droppings and the contents of chamber pots."

"Your place on the course is immediately after the group in front and not immediately before the group behind."

+ and I want to make a note to visit Piazzale Loreto in Milan where in April 1945 the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress had been hung upside down in from of a gas station. Furious mobs had spat on the corpses and beaten them with sticks. 

love, Carlee