Travellers Calabria, 2nd Edition

8 CommentsThursday • May 12, 2011 • by michelle

If you’re headed to the toe of the boot, you’ll want to have the second edition of Travellers Calabria by Lara Dunston and Terry Carter tucked away in your travel bag. This guidebook gives a solid overview of many aspects of Calabrian culture including archaeology, history, and food, while also offering sightseeing, accommodation, and restaurant tips as well.

In short, it does exactly what a guidebook should — and it’s conveniently only slightly larger than pocket-sized to boot.

The photographs are consistently gorgeous and the text covers much more than the main tourist destinations like Tropea, Gerace, and Reggio Calabria; it also shares some of my favorite even more off-the-beaten stops like Pizzo, Le Castella, and Serra San Bruno.

I especially love the section that lists, by season, which attractions a visitor should enjoy in Calabria; first-time visitors will also appreciate the inclusion of basic information on how to arrive and get around, handle money issues, navigate national holidays, and even say some basic phrases in Italian.

If I have one slight criticism, it’s the lack of coverage of the Catanzaro province, where I happen to live in what many consider to be one of the most picturesque medieval villages in Calabria (Badolato). For the province, there are no restaurants listed outside of the city of Catanzaro, and available accommodations are also a bit ignored — there are some great agriturismi, in particular, that offer not only great lodging but also excellent dining options with food prepared from products grown and raised on the premises.

I realize this information isn’t easy to come by even for savvy guidebook researchers, but I do hope to see the Catanzaro section expanded a bit in future updates.

Overall, though, you’re not going to find a better, more comprehensive guidebook for Calabria in English, and this one comes complete with suggested one-week, two-week, and longer itineraries in case you prefer to have someone else do the planning. There are also walking tours of Reggio Calabria, Tropea, and Crotone as well as driving tours of the national parks in both the Sila and Aspromonte Mountains.

I highly recommend this book to anyone planning a trip to Calabria or who wants to learn more about the region and all it has to offer.

To see the rest of the Travellers series, visit Thomas Cook Publishing.

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Speak Italian Magically by Antonio Libertino

4 CommentsTuesday • May 10, 2011 • by michelle

Through the use of both a book and audio files, Speak Italian Magically by Antonio Libertino offers an innovative way to learn Italian — during a “state of relaxed alertness.”

If you’ve ever listened to meditation or yoga music — or type away on OMMwriter as I do — the basic theory behind the audio files will sound familiar to you. Essentially, by putting your brain in a relaxed state, it becomes more open to accepting the new words you are about to absorb.

The listener is instructed to get comfortable and imagine a time when you have learned something important to you — note that these are *not* lessons that you should listen to in your car on the way to work.

The lesson continues with the speaker alternating between Italian and English, side by side, and as the lessons progress, you will hear more and more Italian. I love this concept since we all know, especially those of us who have lived through it, how well the “sink or swim” or more properly called “full immersion” method of language learning works.

You can also follow all of the audio files with the book, which would be extra helpful for someone like me who is a visual learner — I need to see words to remember them, and not just in my mind. I especially love the intermingling of Italian phrases right next to their English counterparts throughout; it does seems that this would help your brain equate the two, especially with the repetition that is built into the lessons and also which you can do on your own.

As someone who already understands and speaks Italian daily, I can’t definitively say whether Speak Italian Magically is an effective way to learn the language. That said, I will say with absolute certainty that I would love to see Antonio also release intermediate and advanced level books and audio files; I truly believe this methodology is something that would work for me to absorb more advanced grammar rules and vocabulary, so I hope future volumes are in the works.

Find more information online: SpeakItalianMagically.com.

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Pieces of Someday by Jan Vallone

0 CommentsThursday • May 5, 2011 • by michelle

Pieces of Someday, the memoir of Jan Vallone, tells the story of an Italian-American woman who, after decades of striving to fulfill the wishes of her parents, comes to realize that she hasn’t yet discovered her true self.

So, at age 44, Jan leaves her law practice to teach English in a yeshiva high school — perhaps a curious career move for a Catholic lawyer, but there’s no doubt that for Jan, a whole new journey had begun. Jan’s search to balance her career and family with her own individual pursuit of happiness had been a lifelong struggle, but once she began following her heart, good things followed.

The book takes us through Jan’s life in New York, Seattle, and various trips to Italy — and she never skims over the difficult parts, namely a strained relationship with her father, marital problems, infertility, and struggles with her own faith. Instead, Jan carries us with her through her conflicting emotions and values, often with a sense of dry humor that I found entirely relatable.

Jan’s word selection is superb and her rich descriptions pick up the reader and gently drop her into each scene. One of my favorites is toward the end of the book when Jan and her family go to Sicily to see the remembrance of her grandmother that, as family legend had it, her grandfather had erected back in their small village of Castelvetrano:

We walked silent, filed around it, skirting a rusty railing collapsed at its feet. The grotto — ivy shrouded, suckers crumbling its surface, shoot tips tasseling its mouth. Inside, bird-soiled Mary prayed with fingerless rosary-strung hands, and the altar, sooty, fractured, was ankle-deep in trash. Outside in the porcelain photo, my grandmother, half my age, smiled above the tarnished plaque….

I give Pieces of Someday four espresso cups out of five and recommend it to anyone who has struggled with balancing what is expected of you with what you truly want — and also to those who simply enjoy good, descriptive writing.

More about the book:

Pieces of Someday has won two Reader Views Reviewers Choice Awards, placing first nationally in the memoir category and first across genres in the Pacific region. It is also now available on Kindle ($5.99 as of this writing).

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