@brittarnhild
Back in February 2007, I write in my blog: Some years ago, before blogging, I used to write "Booktalks from Norway", an almost weekly column. When I started blogging I had every intention to let my booktalks be included in my blogging, but when I now look back on 25 months as a blogger, I see that I have written very little about books. So now I plan to start a "Booktalk on a Sunday" column.
I ran the Booktalk on a Sunday for several years, and during the first years I always included a link to one of my Venice books, in the very first post it was Jan Morris´ Venice.
The first post here in Books on the Menu is from August 2013, and as I write in it, I got the inspiration to start this book blog from:
The Collected Traveler, An Inspired Companion Guide, edited by Barrie Kerper, preparing for an upcoming trip to Istanbul. On page 214, where Kerper writes an introduction to Brian Lavery´s article about Orhan Pamuk, I read:
......Pamuk is by all accounts, a true bibliophile. It´s been said of him that his source of inspiration is more litterature than life, and his reading is encyclopedic......
But, that´s me, I almost said out load, and in the same moment I knew that a new blog was born
It was one of the chapters in The Collected Traveler which made me order Strolling Through Venice by John Freely.........
And today, as it is full time to reopen Books on the Menu, after a months´sleep, I open it by taking you to Venice, yet again.
And as a start I want to take you back to this post from Sept 22 last year,
Strolling Through Venice
My love affair with Venice, or Venezia as I prefere to call it, started when I was 14. I had three younger brothers, and that summer, in 1972, my brave, adventurous parents took us all on a caravan travel from Trondheim in Norway, through Europe, sout to Lido di Jesolo, close to Venezia. One day we went in to visit La Serenissima, and I was lost.
It took me a great many years to come back though. Not until 2005, when my husband and I wanted to do something special for our silver anniversary, and we spent a week in Nati House.
Since then I have been back, and back, and back and back and......
Reading books from and about Venezia must have started about the same time, in September 2005. We rented Nati House, and I remember there were a lot of Venezia books in the appartment. It must have been there I found my first Donna Leon, and also the first book which took me on walks around the city. Then, on my next visit I found a tiny little bookstore with old and new English books about Venezia in the Ghetto, and I went back home with a suitcase too heavy.
Since then my collection on Venezia books has grown, with speed, and somehow I always have a Venezia book on the go somewhere in the house.
The latest adition to my collection came in the mail from amazon a few weeks ago; John Freely´s Strolling Through Venice. the Definitive Walking Guidebook to La Serenissima.
Today I have watched RAI uno´s progran from last night about Venezia, my mind is flowing over with longing. The perfect night to enjoy a glass of red wine and to start John Freely´s book.