54. The View from Lake Como by Adriana Trigiani

listened on Libby

416 pgs. (12:17)

2025
Adult CRF
Finished 112/30/2025
Goodreads rating: 3.86
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary Lake Como, NJ AND Italy - Tuscany

My comments: I loved listening to this, Mira Sorvino does a wonderful job and kept me listening even when I thought it was getting a little too long.  Jess tells her entire story, and in doing so keeps going back in her memories to conversations and moments in time with her family.  This technique worked really well for me, and I feel I got to know Jess - and her tight, eccentric Italian-American New Jersey shore family very well.  The second half of the story is set in Tuscany, Italy, which I didn't really like as well as the first part, though both told the story of an Italian family with strong, firm roots in Italy.

Goodreads synopsis:  From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani, a “dazzling” storyteller (Washington Post), and a “comedy writer with a heart of gold” (NYT), comes a novel about one woman’s quest to build her own life before it’s too late. 

Jess Capodimonte Baratta is not living the life of her dreams. Not even close.
 
In blue-collar Lake Como, New Jersey, family comes first. Recently divorced from Bobby Bilancia, “the perfect husband," Jess moves into her parents’ basement to hide and heal. Jess is the overlooked daughter, who dutifully takes care of her parents, cooks Sunday dinner, and puts herself last. Despite her role as the family handmaiden, Jess is also a talented draftswoman in the marble business run by her confidant, her dapper uncle Louie, who believes she can do anything (once she invests in a better wardrobe).  
 
When the Capodimonte and Baratta families endure an unexpected loss, the shock unearths long-buried secrets that will force Jess to question her loyalty to those she trusted. Fueled by her lost dreams, Jess takes fate into her own hands and escapes to her ancestral home, Carrara, Italy.
 
From the shadows of the majestic marble-capped mountains of Tuscany, to the glittering streets of Milan, and on the shores of enchanting Lake Como (the other one), Jess begins to carve a place in this new/old world. When she meets Angelo Strazza, a passionate artist who works in gold, she discovers her own skills are priceless. But as Jess uncovers the truth about her family history, it will change the course of her life and those she loves the most forever.  In love and work, in art and soul, Jess will need every tool she has mastered to reinvent her life.

Fed by the author’s cherished Italian roots comes a bighearted, hilarious novel of the the story of one woman’s determination to live a creative life that matters, with enough room left over for love. With a one-way ticket to Italy, Jess is determined to write a new story on her own terms--this time, in stone.

MOVIE - Call Me By Your Name

R (2:10)

Wide release 1/19/18

Viewed February 24, 2018 somewhere in PA
IMBd:   8.0

RT Critic:  95  Audience: 85
Critic's Consensus:  Call Me by Your Name offers a melancholy, powerfully affecting portrait of first love, empathetically acted by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

Cag:  5/Loved it

Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Written by James Ivory, and based on the book of the same title

Sony Pictures Classics

Armie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet

My comments:  How can you go wrong with a lush set and setting in northern Italy; two wonderful, likable protagonists - one adorable and one gorgeous - and a lovely love story?  Then throw in some particularly cool music, a thundering powerful waterfall, a few different romantic languages and you have this great indie movie.  I liked it a lot.  It was so weird that when the movie ended, the entire very-full movie theater was totally silent for quite a few minutes, even as they collected their belongings and got up to leave.  (I wish I could have the script to the father's soliloquy to the son near the very end of the movie.  It was pretty cool.)

RT/ IMDb Summary:  CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, the new film by Luca Guadagnino, is a sensual and transcendent tale of first love, based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman. It's the summer of 1983 in the north of Italy, and Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a precocious 17- year-old American-Italian, spends his days in his family's 17th century villa transcribing and playing classical music, reading, and flirting with his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel). Elio enjoys a close relationship with his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), an eminent professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture, and his mother Annella (Amira Casar), a translator, who favor him with the fruits of high culture in a setting that overflows with natural delights. While Elio's sophistication and intellectual gifts suggest he is already a fully-fledged adult, there is much that yet remains innocent and unformed about him, particularly about matters of the heart. One day, Oliver (Armie Hammer), a charming American scholar working on his doctorate, arrives as the annual summer intern tasked with helping Elio's father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of the setting, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever.

MOVIE - Inferno

PG-13 (2:02)

Wide release 10/27/16

Viewed Roadhouse on Halloween with Cyra!

RT Critic:  20  Audience:  43
Critic's Consensus:  Senselessly frantic and altogether shallow, Inferno sends the Robert Langdon trilogy spiraling to a convoluted new low.

Cag:  3/Liked it once I started understanding what was going on....but not great

Directed by Ron Howard

Sony Pictures

Based on the book by Dan Brown

Tom Hanks, Ben Foster, Felicity Jones

My comments:  For the first third of the movie I was totally and completely confused, as I imagine anyone watching this would be, unless perhaps they'd read the book.  There were three or four different factions of people working against?? with?? each other and major flashbacks.  As it slowly started making sense I enjoyed it more.  You had to really pay attention, and it would help if one had a tiny sense of 

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Tom Hanks reprises his role as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon in director Ron Howard and screenwriter David Koepp's adaptation of author Dan Brown's bestselling novel Inferno, which finds Langdon using Dante's The Divine Comedy as a tool in the race to prevent a devastating global pandemic. 

14. The Evelyn Project - Kfir Luzzatto

Read on my iPhone

2012 Kindle edition, Pine Ten LLC

305 pgs.

Adult CRF/Mystery (supposedly)

Finished 2/9/15

Goodreads rating: 3.83 (30 ratings)

My rating:  1 - Yuck

Setting: Contemporary London, Italy, Austria

1st sentence/s: "London welcomed Franco back as he alighted on the sunny sidewalk, right after the end of his weekly student reception hour, by cunningly thrusting upon him an elderly millionaire who spoke in riddles."

My comments:  I hate reviewing a book when I don't like it, but I guess I've got to be honest.  I didn't like this story - or the storytelling - at all.  It was all tell, no show.  It was like the author made an outline and then filled in a few nouns and verbs.  No character development and very little plot development....nothing surprising or disconcerting, and no reason to read through until the end.  Yuck.

Goodreads book summary:  A loving father's cry for help gets into the wrong hands, and a hundred years later things get out of control.
          Evelyn’s father did everything that was in his power to save his dying daughter, black magic included. But when a century later his plea for help gets into the wrong hands, all hell breaks loose.
          Caught in the slippery battlefield between the Vatican and a cult that wants to change the past, a young Italian professor and a beautiful French aspiring actress are too busy running away from murder and conspiracy to let physical attraction develop into love.
          And it doesn’t help that Her Majesty's Secret Service decides to take an interest in what everybody else is doing and to pull some strings of its own. Quite the contrary, in fact…

MOVIE - The Double Hour

Good movie.  Good mystery.  Great storytelling.
in Italian, with subtitles
limited release 4-15-11
Unrated (1:35)
July 30 at the Loft, alone
RT  82% cag 91%
Director:  Giuseppe Capatondi

Guido, a handsome guy in Turin, Italy, has been part of the speed dating scene for awhile, hooking up for one-night stands.  But then he meets Sonia, a conscientious hotel chambermaid, and they instantly hit it off.  He takes her to his security job in the country, and while there, the huge country estate he guards is robbed and neither Guido or Sonia come out of it unscathed.  The rest of the movie is a mystery, billed as a psychological thriller, I would definitely agree.  As an onlooker you're trying to figure out what's going on and just as you have a glimmer, a real  twist is added , and then another, to keep you just enough off balance ..... in a great way.  A good one.

Nonna Tell Me a Story - Lidia Bastianich

Lidia's Christmas Kitchen
Illustrated by Laura Logan
RP Kids (Running Press), 2010
$15.95
56 pages
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Diagonal yellow striped "tablecloth" with small cookies whose recipes are given at the end of the book.

Nonni Lidia gathers her five grandchildren around her and tells the story of finding a juniper tree in the woods and decorating it for Christmas when she was a child in Italy. The family didn't have much, and they decorated the tree with candies and fruits, homemade cookies, strings of bay leaves and dry figs.

When the time comes for the grandkids to help Nonni trim the tree, they feel the store-bought decorations are not sepcial enough. So they all set to work cooking and creating the decorations in the same way Nonni had when she was a young girl.

The last third of the book are cookie recipes - more than a dozen really yummy ones. And the last two pages give hints for decorating the tree with fruits, nuts, Christmas cookies, first aid cotton, and cinnamon sticks.

Apparently Lidia Bastianich is a famous tv chef. Not the type of show I watch - but I bet it's fun. The book's the kind of book I read - it's great.

MOVIE - Eat, Pray, Love

Gorgeous settings - Rome, India, Bali
Released 8-13-10
PG-13 (2:13)
Wed. 8-25-10 at El Con with great friends I haven't seen in awhile
RT: 38% cag: 70%
Director: Ryan Murphy
from the book by Elizabeth Gilbert (which I kept putting off reading)
Julia Roberts, James Franco, Javier Bardem

This is the story of a woman searching for herself. She's unhappy in her marriage, leaves her husband, has a fling with a younger man, decides there's something missing there, so takes off for a year in search of herself. Imagine being able to do that! She goes to Italy to eat, India to pray, and in Bali she finds love - and supposedly learns to love herself. She cries her way through the story - lots of glistening tears, a few falling down her cheeks - and I found all I wanted to do was take her by the shoulders, shake her a bit, and say, "Enough, already!"

I loved, loved, loved the setting and the filming. It was the character of Liz that I just didn't like. I couldn't relate to her no matter how hard I tried. She lives her life feeling sorry for herself, always searching for more, more, more. And the casting of Julia Roberts in the main role didn't work for me. It was Julia Roberts playing a part, not Liz Gilbert searching for self.

My three friends all loved it. All had read the book. One liked the movie better. My daughter loved it. I was expecting to, too. I didn't hate it, but I'm sitting here, 12 hours later, disappointed. I wonder what I expected? Ah, life.....

MOVIE- I Am Love (lo sono l'amore)

Some WOW, Some Blech!
Release (in U.S.) 6-18-10
R (2:00)
8/15/10 at Crossroads
RT: 81, cag: I'll go with the same: 81
Director: Luca Guadagnino
In Italian, with subtitles
Tilda Swinton

Set in modern-day Milan, we meed the affluent Recchi family. The grandfather is turning over the reins of his major factory to his son and grandson. The grandson, Eduardo, has different ideas than his father, and is not wholly invested...he is trying to begin a restaurant with his chef friend, Antonio. The protagonist is his mother, Emma, played by Tilda Swinton. There is also a sister. And although the family has a large "staff," there is one in particular that is highlighted more than the others, which adds a nice touch to the story.

Some of the story is predictable, one, late in the movie, is more of a shock. The cinematography was unusual, some of the music was too loud and tacky for me. I loved Tilda Swinton. I don't really want to tell too much of the plot, 'cause part of the enjoyment was watching the story unfold. At first it seemed cold and emotionless, but warmed up...a lot...as it continued. There's a little bit of everything here. Milan in winter. Black and white vs. color. Love. Parent/child. Lovers. Gourmet food. And touches of all sorts of other things.

The subtitles were easy, you didn't even realize you were reading instead of listening to understand the dialogue.

MOVIE - Letters to Juliet

A sweet, feel good, predictable love story
Released 5-14-10
PG
5-15-10 at El Con, by myself, on its opening weekend
RT: 44% cag: 76%
Director: Gary Winick

Vanessa Redgrave, Amanda Seyfried

I've never been a big Vanessa Redgrave fan. Perhaps it's because I've never seen her in many movies, but she is one classy actress. And the young protagonist, Amanda Seyfried, was smiley and sweet and bubbly and and cute-as-a-button and a dreamer. So yes, this was a soapy, sappy movie, but the kind you need once in awhile to feel good, to enjoy the scenery, and to know exactly what's going to happen all the way through. You leave the theater with a little smile on your face.

The opening credits are pretty cool. We see painting after painting of couples kissing. Tender, sweet lovers. I totally enjoyed the art show.

Sophie and her fiance, Victor, leave for a "pre-honeymoon" to Verona, Italy. He is a chef, about to open a fancy Italian restaurant in Manhattan, she is a researcher for New Yorker magazine, and a wannabe writer. When they get to this incredibly romantic place, he spends all his time on the phone, then spending days on the road to attend a wine auction here, get a cooking lesson there, and tour a cheese-making venue somewhere else. So Sopie is on her own.

She unwittingly meets a group of volunteer women who answer lovelorn letters that are left daily on the wall under Juliet's (of Romeo and Juliet fame) balcony. She unloosens a brick and finds a 50 year old letter written my Englishwoman, Claire, (Redgrave) telling how she abandoned the love-of-her-life because of nerves. This is all in the previews, so I'm giving nothing away. Well, the expected happens....after Claire writes back (as Juliet), Claire and her cutesy grandson come to Verona immediately to try to find the 50-years-lost Lorenzo Bartellini. Charles is totally agains it, and the relationship he has with Sophie at first is extremely strained. Yadeeyadeeya.

The scenery is beautiful. Italy - Tuscany - is gorgeous. The streets are pristine, everyone is nice to each other, there's no traffic anywhere, but the ending is one of those stupid ones that I hate. It celebrates older people loving each other, holding hands, still having passion. And this is a very cool thing. (Made me a little sad and jealous, as usual, but I'm getting used to it.)