It started in the airport.

No, I take that back.  It started weeks before that, at the school library, where my teenager (for reasons I never was clear on) checked out the first book in Patterson’s Maximum Ride series.  And then the second and the third and the fourth . . .

Note to anyone interested in reading them: they don’t end.  They just keep coming.

There’s a reason for that.  Patterson isn’t an author the way, say, I’m an author, or even that a big name like Michael Chabon is an author.  He’s a factory.  He freely admits he works with co-authors on most of the books he writes: he comes up with the idea and the outline and someone else connects the dots, adhering to his style.  According to the New York Times article which describes this process, “since 2006, one out of every 17 novels bought in the United States was written by James Patterson.”

Why are his books so successful?  Well, I’ve started the first Maximum Ride and I can tell you that everything we’ve talked about on this blog as far as the direction kids’ books are moving in is there to the nth degree: constant action, simple language, direct dialogue, exaggerated peril . . .   This isn’t The Secret Garden.  This is hardboiled, exciting and intense thriller-style fiction.  And my boys are eating it up.

Which brings me back to the airport.  So my teenage son is reading the Maximum Ride books and he gets my ten-year-old hooked on them too, right before we head off on our two-week spring break vacation.  My ten-year-old has read the first couple of books and we’ve downloaded another one onto the Kindle.  He’s also bringing a bunch of other books on the trip: my kids read more on vacation than the rest of the year combined.  (Mostly because they watch less TV on vacation than the rest of the year combined.)  His brother is packing the most recent Maximum Ride book, a hardcover called Fang, but there’s a book between the last one Will has and that one, which means there’ll be a gap in his reading.

There’s a very small book display near where we’re sitting in the airport.  And guess what’s there?  Maximum Ride books.  Including the “gap” one–the one Will hasn’t read and we don’t have with us.  I ask him if he wants me to buy it.  And he thinks about it and says, “No, I have enough to read.”

Fine.

Cut to our family, a week later, searching through every English language store in Rome and Venice, trying desperately to get our hands on a copy of that book.  That book we saw in the airport.  That book I pointed to and said, “You want me to get it now?” and Will said, “Nah” to.  The book he now wants more than life itself.

Fortunately for Will, I like an excuse to go to English language bookstores.  Even his father, who normally thinks it’s a waste of time to shop in a foreign country, spots a store in Rome called MelBookstore and goes in (after all, my father’s name is Mel so it’s a good excuse for a photo op).    He scores the third Stieg Larsson book–the British edition.  But they don’t have the Maximum Ride book we need.

I grab the Stieg Larsson book from Rob and insist on reading it first.  (He’s used to this.)  (More on the family vacation reading to come.)  But Will’s birthday is fast approaching and the one thing he truly wants and needs is this Maximum Ride book.  I remind him we could have gotten it at the airport if he’d just said yes.  Oddly enough, he doesn’t find this at all comforting.  He didn’t want the book then.  He wants it now.

Whenever we see, the words “English books” or “International bookstore” we dart inside.  We end up at a store near the Spanish Steps called Il Mare where they have books in English . . . only they’re all about the ocean.  (Ah, yes: Il Mare.  The Sea.  A little slow on that one.)  Will is annoyed.  He wanted James Patterson; he got Jules Verne.  It’s a beautiful little bookstore, though, with an espresso machine and tables in the back and lots of artwork devoted to the sea.   But no one’s in a mood to appreciate it so on we go.  Later, thanks to the list Kim linked to in an earlier post on bookstores in Rome, we go on a journey to find the famous Lion Bookstore, near the Spanish Steps.  At this point, Will is desperate, so when–after a certain unnamed member of the family leads us the wrong way and we get lost for a while first–we finally find the Lion and it’s closed for the night, Will succombs to despair.  Dinner helps.

More bookstores, more disappointments.  There’s a cool one near our hotel that runs underground–you can go down on one side of the big intersection and come up on the other.  My kids are convinced it was once a subway stop but the employees shake their heads no, although that might have been, “no, we have no idea what you keep asking us” as opposed to “no, it’s not a subway stop.”  Anyway, that one doesn’t have any English language books but it helps us get across the street so it’s all good.

A couple of stores taunt us, promising books in English, and featuring James Patterson in their windows (he does get around, that guy).  But they don’t have Maximum Ride.  Or at least not OUR Maximum Ride.  Even the bookstore at the train station where we caught a ride to Venice–which had an enormous English language section, almost a whole floor–didn’t have the one book we wanted.  His disappointment was huge: if it wasn’t there, could it be anywhere in Italy?

It certainly didn’t seem like it could possibly be in Venice, that overpriced Disneyland of a city.  The bookstores near us carried more drawings than books, and the books they had were for gazing at, not reading.

And then.  And then.

Walking along a street, we spot an international bookstore, the Libreria Mondadori (read here for a wonderful description).  We enter.  It’s got a small downstairs but promises a bigger section upstairs.  We run up the stairs and traipse around.  Where are the English books?  In a far off corner, we discover.  We prowl, we poke, we scan the shelves. James Patterson, yes; Maximum Ride, no.  We tell Will to find something else, so he obediently–if somewhat unenthusiastically starts looking through the shelves.  He’s picked a possible contender when Johnny shouts exultantly: he’s just unearthed a single Maximum Ride book.

And it’s the one we need.

13 Euros later (Don’t think of how much cheaper it would have been in the airport, Claire, not to mention at any bookstore near home), the book was safely tucked away in Will’s backpack.

His birthday was the day after and guess what he wanted to do for it?

Stay in the hotel and read, of course.

Maybe someday he’ll see the Doge’s Palace.  But not this year.

The atmosphere was fun, when I visited two booksellers were holding court along with a professor from Cal State Los Angeles and an ex-pat who later delivered us to a terrific dinner restaurant.  Their customers are tourists to a certain extent (apparently an Australian Cardinal drops in every time he’s in Rome to buy a novel for the plane ride home), but at least a third are English speaking Rome residents.  Many Italians who read English books because book options are limited in Italian, the publishing world is smaller. The store’s bestsellers are detective and mystery books, even before the likes of Dan Brown, especially if the locale is Italy.  Once Almost Corner buys a book, they keep it until it’s sold.  While the store doesn’t sell used books, some of them may be very old.

Rome was the last stop on our trip to Italy and by the time I reached the Almost Corner Bookstore in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome, I couldn’t help noticing lots of the small bookstores scattered throughout the country in both large and small cities.  Finding a native English speaker and bookseller, I asked about the prevalence of bookstores everywhere.  The answer, there isn’t competition.  To buy a book is to buy it at the local bookstore.  There are bookstore chains,Feltrinelli being the most prevalent, but the stores themselves aren’t huge and they haven’t permeated everywhere.  But what about Amazon?  I was shocked to learn that there is very little e-commerce in Italy.  The Italians firmly believe that if they give their credit card online, the next day their entire bank account and retirement savings will be gone.  Moreover, there isn’t anywhere for a book to be delivered.  Most Italians live in apartments with small mailboxes and no one trusts their neighbors enough to leave a package by the mailboxes or the door to the apartment.  The person I was talking to said that there isn’t evidence of mass theft from the mail; it’s just a cultural belief.  I was stunned and asked what does an Italian do when a package is to be delivered?  A few neighbors have their packages delivered to the bookstore, but mostly they simply do not receive packages.  E-commerce hardly exists in Italy.  I felt like I was stepping in the early 1980s before the advent of Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.  Italian suspicion is saving the small store owner.

And that unique store name?  Years ago the store was situated on the corner and was called Corner Bookstore.  A larger space with better heating opened up down the block and the owner grabbed it and changed the name to Almost Corner Bookstore.  If you are fortunate enough to be in Rome, stop by and chat.  You may find a new but yellowed book to keep you company on the plane trip home.

For more English bookstores in Rome, check out Ron in Rome.

Almost Corner Bookstore

Via del Moro 45

Trastevere, Rome 00153

Tel:  39 06 583 6942

Michelangelo Distilled

After hours listening to art history lectures, wading through biographies and art history books, I found A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome refreshingly informative and compact.  Angela Nickerson finds the perfect balance between the man, his era, and his art.  Michelangelo’s creations are a product of the intellectual fervor, the spiritual upheaval, and the political patronage system of the Renaissance.  In the opening chapters, the book gives  an overview of the events that shaped Michelangelo’s world.  The book then continues with a focus on his life and his work.  Without any information, Michelangelo’s works are beautiful, but with the right background, their brilliance grows.   

His Art – Technical and Fun

With luscious photographs, Angela leads us through Michelangelo’s life in art, from The Madonna of the Stairs to the Florentine Pieta.   Angela points out the unique aspects of each piece of art and the interesting stories behind them.   While thousands of words could be written about the Rome Pieta, Angela precisely points out Michelangelo’s mastery: 

The composition Michelangelo created involved carving two full-sized figures from one block of marble–a difficult task.  Michelangelo bent the rules of proportion to his own purposes:  Mary is much larger than Jesus to support the weight of a life-sized figure in her lap, but their heads are the same size, making  the difference in size hard to detect.  Mary’s size serves as a structural purpose, but it also allows the grieving mother to hold her son on her lap, creating a tableau that is both powerful and tender.

And the gossip about the piece?  After it was installed in St. Peter’s, Michelangelo overheard someone attribute the work to another artist.  Not happy, Michelangelo carved his name along Mary’s sash.  This is the only work he ever signed.  I love back stories; I frequently find the art more intimate and memorable after hearing them.

I enjoyed the pairing of photographs of Michelangelo’s work of art with the inspiration for the art, something usually only found in art history classes or huge art history books, not in a portable book.  I can’t view the ancient Laocoon and Michelangelo’s Moses at that same time, they are miles apart, but having the photos side-by-side, I could look at one in person and see how it was in dialogue with the other. 

In my very limited experience, Michelangelo’s architectural work is frequently overshadowed by his sculpture and painting.  Angela describes his impact on St. Peter’s and his design for the Capitoline Hill.  When I walked up the Capitoline Hill, into one of the most beautiful piazzas ever, the Piazza del Campidoglio, I was so grateful I had read  A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome.  Without Angela’s guidance, I would have missed all that Michelangelo accomplished there.

Michelangelo – The Man

A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome isn’t limited to Michelangelo’s art.  Angela gives insight into his family relationships, his friends, his spirituality, and his work habits.  I found his relationship with Vittoria Colonna is fascinating.  The book provides a history of the relationship and a map showing where they met to talk for hours about their faith.  Attacked by his enemies, Angela describes Michelangelo’s struggles with other artists, the Pope (the tomb project would plague him) and papal advisors.  Cesena disagrees with Michelangelo’s portrayal of nudes and earns a portrait of himself as Minos in The Last Judgment,  beautiful photo of which is included in the book. 

The Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome extends beyond Michelangelo’s lifetime, describing the drama over the location of his body (it was stolen and sent to Florence), the work on his tomb, and the artists he influenced.  Interestingly, Vasari, who gives a contemporaneous view of Michelangelo in his Lives of the Artists, receives the commission to complete Michelangelo’s tomb.  Vasari’s design, in Florence’s Santa Croce, does not compare with Michelangelo’s Florentine Pieta, which he started to sculpt for his tomb, but never completed.

The combination of both personal and professional, with photos and maps, results in an art history book that invaluable to the Roman visitor and a joy for the armchair traveler.