100 books like My Venice and Other Essays

Jan Morris, who writes as elegantly as anyone about Venice, conducts us on a historical cruise through its maritime empire – both a history and a travelogue. It’s a beguiling evocation of the Mediterranean that we all dream of. Venice at one time or another held Constantinople, Crete, Cyprus, the dotted islands of the Aegean and the coast of Dalmatia – an empire of forts, harbours, and naval bases, all badged with Venice’s corporate logo – the winged lion. In Morris’s hands it’s an invitation to sail immediately. Her book on Venice itself is excellent too.

This book was revolutionary in its time because it was very rare at the time of publication that someone could go abroad to really discover themselves.

Gilbert forcing herself to focus on the absolute most terrifying thing–your own areas for growth–leads her into dark places, but also the bright light at the end of the tunnel that comes with doing this type of self work. It was quite enjoyable joining her on this journey and what each place she visited taught her.

This was the first Anthony Doerr book I read—the literary equivalent of eating dessert first. I’ve since savored his novels, but this irresistible feast of delicious morsels of Italian life lingers in my mind. Doerr doesn’t show you Rome. He invites you to live in it with him—during his sleepless nights, in the company of his twin babies, as a beloved Pope lies dying and the seasons bring new enchantments. 

I can’t say whether I love this book more for the writing or for its tender portrait of Rome. Read it for the double pleasures of exquisitely crafted vignettes and a virtual visit to a city that eternally surprises and seduces visitors.  

Sicily is part of my family’s heritage, and back when they emigrated to America, they left a lot of their language and culture behind or didn’t pass it down to the next generation.

Seeking Sicily fills in some of those blanks in my family’s cultural history. It does what I haven’t been able to do, roam around the island meeting many different people and asking about everything from food to religious rituals to life amid the ruins of old palaces and ancient monuments.

It’s a really intimate book that still gives a great overview of Sicilian life.

I am always grateful for guidance on how to look at paintings: Matar’s exploration of Siena and the paintings of the Sienese school offers that and much more. Color reproductions of the paintings are accompanied by Matar’s insights into the works and the companionship they have provided in the years that have elapsed since his father, an opponent of the Gaddafi regime, was kidnapped. The author’s recognition that he will never see his father again underlies this beautiful meditation on art and loss.

An English novelist, a long-time resident of (and writer about) Italy, Parks is well placed to offer his hugely entertaining take on rail travel in Europe’s most gloriously maddening country. It’s neither fully a history book nor travelogue, though Parks writes divertingly and inspiringly about both history and travel. Instead, it’s partly an attempt to appreciate Italy through its railways – as he says early on, “if someone wanted to understand Italy, they might start by understanding how the train ticketing system works.” For anyone who has ever wrestled with the intransigence of an Italian rail conductor, stood forlornly waiting for an inexplicably delayed train, been crammed into a corridor with furiously smoking army conscripts, or been fed oranges by a garrulous Sicilian family, this book is a joy of recognition, despair, and delight.

At the height of her success as an American writer, Lahiri moved to Italy to pursue her dream of mastering the Italian language.

She got more than what she had hoped for—a new voice, not just a new language. But this discovery comes after many trials and tribulations that show her that a language is a whole universe that demands we completely re-invent, not merely translate ourselves. 

This is the memoir of a writer who is keenly aware of language as a key part of our human condition, bilingual already before leaving Italy (in Bengali and English) and never fully at home in any language.

Italian teaches her the humbleness of sounding simple and modest; the courage of making mistakes; the patience to build a vocabulary, storing new words like a collector obsessed with having more and more items; the confidence to speak with natives, including judgmental ones who always… show more.

Historical travelogues were once the stuff of National Geographic, but John Keahey, who had a long career as a journalist, is part of a new wave of authors reviving that tradition. 

His Italian travels have yielded several books, two on Sicily alone. If his work touches the soul of the people and places he encounters, this one was certainly challenging for its emphasis on the ancient Romans of West and East, but he was able to meet a few of their descendants in Italy, Albania, and Greece.

I enjoyed reading about his journey.

I love comics of all kinds, so found it impossible to resist Andrea Wulf’s idea of adapting her popular biography of ecological pioneer Von Humboldt to the graphic form. Illustrator Lillian Melcher combines her comic chops and inventive design sense with Von Humboldt’s own drawings, maps, and specimen papers to create a book that truly enhances Wulf’s scholarly investigations. Plus it’s so much fun. 

For me the best book on walking is by the German film director Werner Herzog.

In 1974 Herzog was told that his friend, the film historian Lotte Eisner, was dying. In what can perhaps be described as a fugue state Herzog pulled on his boots, grabbed a jacket and compass, and set off on a monumental, almost shamanic, journey from his home in Munich to her deathbed in Paris, believing his act of walking would keep her alive.

The journey took three weeks and Herzog walked through the thick of winter. On arrival, Eisner had already recovered. Of Walking in Ice is Herzog’s diary charting this incredible pilgrimage. Tender, beautiful, and genuinely insightful, I’ve read this short book over and over again. It’s probably time I read it again!