Thanks to Elle and Jana for participating this month!

My reading and borrowing since last time:

READ

• Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt
• One Midsummer’s Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth by Mark Cocker
• Protecting the Planet: The Season of Giraffes by Nicola Davies
• Rhubarb Lemonade by Oskar Kroon
• August Blue by Deborah Levy
• La Vie: A Year in Rural France by John Lewis-Stempel

&

Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati (2022; 2023)

[Translated from the Italian by Elena Pala]

My final #WITMonth selection (I’m pleased with my total of nine, after these four and those four!) and a perfect choice for readers of Shaun Bythell’s bookshop diaries. Instead of a lovable grump in Wigtown, you get a tiny town in the Tuscan hills and a stock of mostly women’s literature and bluestocking gifts curated by an outspoken feminist poet in her sixties. She relied on crowdfunding to open the shop in 2019 – and again to rebuild it after a devastating fire just a couple of months later.

Set during the first five months of 2021, this gives lovely snapshots of a bookseller’s personal and professional life without overstaying its welcome or getting repetitive. Donati has an adult daughter and a 101-year-old mother who was only just losing independence. Although she generally feels supported by the people of Lucignana, some 30% are naysayers, she estimates, and not everyone shares her opinions – she’s outraged when the council cuts down all the trees in the central square.

While keeping the focus on books, she also manages to give a sense of her family’s convoluted wartime history, local politics, and shifting Covid restrictions. I especially enjoyed hearing about her 25-year career in publishing; Edward Carey, Michael Cunningham, and Daša Drndić were ‘her’ authors and she has juicy stories to tell about all three.

Each entry ends with a list of that day’s orders. It’s fascinating to see which are the popular authors in translation – Maeve Brennan, Emily Dickinson, Fannie Flagg, Kent Haruf, Jenny Offill, Vita Sackville-West, Ali Smith – as well as plenty in various European languages. Sometimes, no doubt, the stock reflects Donati’s own taste. [A couple of the English titles are rendered incorrectly: “Longbourne House” by Jo Baker and “Woman, Girl, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo should have been caught before this went to print.]

In short, she’s a bookish kindred spirit (“I like books that make you discover other books – a virtuous cycle that should never be broken. The only eternity we will ever experience here on earth”) and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her fairly uneventful yet rewarding days. This, too, was perfect (summer) armchair travel reading.

SKIMMED

• The Orchid Outlaw by Ben Jacob

CURRENTLY READING

• The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett
• The Three Graces by Amanda Craig
• Reproduction by Louisa Hall
• Milk by Alice Kinsella
• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
• Wild Fell by Lee Schofield

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• The Other Side of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker – I read the first 82 pages. This was capable hist fic but without the spark that would have kept me interested.
• King by Jonathan Eig – Requested after I’d only read two chapters. It’s a massive biography, so I’ll have to get it back out another time when I can give it more attention.

What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?

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