Another way to travel

Long before I knew that Lay's potato chips had a slogan about not eating just one, I knew from addiction. I'm addicted to reading and to books. This is a well documented problem over at The Family Addiction blog*.

From justnergirlproblems.tumblr.com & found on Pinterest

I learned how to read at my maternal grandmother's table over the summer between kindergarten and first grade. My elementary teacher aunt thought I ought to, and I did. And I haven't stopped since.

So you can imagine how delighted I was to find the St. Augustine quote that I used to name this blog. Books as a metaphor for travel? But, of course!

I've long felt that books allowed me to experience, vicariously, people and places and situations that I otherwise wouldn't know. So as I sit here in a small Italian town outside a cafe with my San Pellegrino, let me tell you about the other places I've visited while I was technically traveling to or traveling in Italy.

It's possible I've been reading ABOUT Italy as well.

• I've been in London, Southern Florida, the Caribbean isles and the spirit world with Fat Charlie Nancy in Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.
• I've driven the back roads of much of the Midwest including Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri with a few otherworldly side trips thrown in as I followed Shadow from Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
• I investigated a big, mostly empty country house in Britain with a young, sick boy and The Borrowers in the book of the same name by Mary Norton.
• I stayed in isolated home in futuristic Russia with a man who could teleport us all to the forests of California near a futuristic San Francisco in Nalini Singh's Heart of Obsidian.
• I'm still fighting for my own survival with a small group of teens in a small Canadian island off of Vancouver Island in Kelley Armstrong's Darkness Rising trilogy. (I'll finish up the third book on the bus ride to Verona on Saturday.)
• I careened through the traffic gridlock of a futuristic New York with Eve Dallas in JD Robb's Calculated in Death
• I trooped through the woods of a tiny Québécois hamlet just north of the US border with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in Louise Penny's Still Life.

In reality, I started in Decatur, Illinois and flew from Chicago to New York and Milan, Italy. From there I traveled by bus to Urbania, Urbino, Modena, Florence, Gubbio, Assisi, and Gabicce. This weekend we're off to Verona and Venice before we wrap up the program and head back to Milan. From there it's a flight to Atlanta, another to Chicago and a shuttle ride to Decatur.

It's no wonder I often need to nap; I just can't sit still, :-P

Oh, books. I love you.

*I've been remiss in my book blogging lately and writing about these books has reminded of how much I enjoy it. I'm going to throw together reviews for The Family Addiction for the Neil Gaiman books and Still Life by Louis Penny. (I've already reviewed the Eve Dallas series and the Nalini Singh series. You can find those here and here.) I'll also review The Borrowers for BTweenBooks as well as the Darkness Rising series.)

 

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