If you like "Ciao America!" by Beppe Severgnini...
Thank you for requesting a book match. If you like Ciao America! by Beppe Severgnini, then you may also like these titles and authors.
I'm A Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after 30 Years Away by Bill Bryson
The master humorist and bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods now guides us on an affectionate, hysterically funny tour of America's most outrageous absurdities. After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly three million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new-and-improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. From motels ("one of those things--airline food is another--that I get excited about and should know better") to careless barbers ("in the mirror I am confronted with an image that brings to mind a lemon meringue pie with ears"), I'm a Stranger Here Myself chronicles the quirkiest aspects of life in America, right down to our hardware-store lingo, tax-return instructions, and vulnerability to home injury ("statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants than by a stranger"). Along the way Bill Bryson also reveals his rules for life (#1: It is not permitted to be both slow and stupid. You must choose one or the other); delivers the commencement address to a local high school ("I've learned that if you touch a surface to see if it's hot, it will be"); and manages to make friends with a skunk. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended, if at times bemused, love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away. (Catalog summary)
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
A funny--and often hilarious--month-by-month account of the charms and frustrations of moving into an old French farmhouse in Provence and adapting to a very different way of life. (Catalog summary)
Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small-Town America by Bill Geist
Coming on the heels of Geist's 5,600-mile RV trip across America is a hilarious and compelling mix of stories along with some observations on his 20 years of life on the road. (Catalog summary)
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In "Under the Tuscan Sun," she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table. (Catalog summary)
The Muse is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu
These essays by the sharp and ingratiating Codrescu ( Road Scholar ) rove all over the place, and readers should be ready to do likewise. The author, a Transylvanian-born poet, a longtime resident of the U.S. and a commentator for National Public Radio, takes up subjects just as incongruously diverse as himself in his 26th book. As his fans will be glad to find, Codrescu stays in character: he is passionate, informal, maverick and ragingly funny, unwilling to behave. ``All the right-wingers have whiskers,'' he mutters sotto voce in ``Black Water''
about the Russian film director Yuri Mamin and his movie The Fountain.
And in ``A Kind of Love,'' Codrescu considers the muse of baseball.
``There is some evidence,'' he offers mischievously, ``that baseball was brought to America by Romanians. Transylvanian shepherds play a primitive form of stickball called oina that resembles baseball.'' The title piece, a chuckling love song to his home port, praises Dixie's Voodoo Blackened Beer, the city's above-ground Lafayette Cemetery, fig trees that flourish in the tropical heat, and stories that do, too.
(Publishers Weekly)
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Thanks again for using the Central Rappahannock Regional Library. Happy reading!
Kara Rockwell
Reference Libraran
