I’ve recently come across your 2007 postings and am wondering whether your site is still operational.

I appreciate your nice comments about “Aggiungi un posto a tavola” and am interested in your statements that DVDs of the show were/are available. As the author of the original novel on which the show is based I have never been aware that such DVDs were available, as I would like one myself! Were they sold, or issued free with newspapers? What was the means of their distribution?

For your further information, an English-language version of the show HAS been staged — at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1978/9.
It’s title then was ‘Beyond the Rainbow’, and that production, too, starred Johnny Dorelli.
It was financed by Universal Pictures.

Best wishes,

David Forrest

My vision was never good and now, as well as being desperately nearsighted, I’m also losing my close-up vision. So I find the tiny fonts on many sites very difficult to read. Many of my readers are at least as old as I am, so I deliberately set the page fonts a little larger than current web norms.

Now I just need to figure out how to do that for this comments blog!

“she is a wonderfull person.”

Thanks. So are you, as I now know having had you in my house for several days! (Along with a bunch of other videobloggers, in case anyone’s wondering.)

“I like everything India related. Because is interesting, and also because I´m easy when it comes to India.”

I didn’t know that! Why the interest in India?

“Since she is not a feminist (I think), I value her oppinion.”

I am most definitely a feminist, but evidently the word has some connotation for you that I don’t fit.

“mail it to Milan to have her sign it, and only after read it. ”

Better yet, I’ll bring it to you in person!

Keep up the fantastic work!

You don’t know me, but I found your site as I was searching for information on the Milan metro (of all things) when I was getting ready to go to Italy last year. I kept on reading and got hooked for many of the same reasons that other reviewers have already mentioned. I’ll echo what Sean said up above because he said it so well:

“I keep coming back because you’re a great writer, and you can make almost any subject interesting. At this point, I also visit the site because I’m genuinely interested in how you and your family are doing…I first came to the site for your articles on living in Italy, especially the difficult/unromantic parts that one doesn’t hear about elsewhere.”

1. What do you like and dislike about the site?

I enjoy the majority of it very much. Someone else commented that the site design itself is very “busy”, but then, just to go solely by what you say in your writing, it seems like your life is just as busy. So the media content only adds to the overall effect, I think. I’ve got to admit, though–a few times when I clicked on a page and a video has started automatically without warning, I’ve almost jumped out of my skin when singing or animal noises or something else starts blasting out of my speakers. *amused*

I don’t usually read the cooking bits or some of the more focused technological articles about vlogging/the future of digital media, but those definitely have their place here as well.

- If I were to write a book based (more or less) on what’s on the site, what do you think the book’s central theme should be?

Just going by what you’ve already written here on this website, I don’t really think that a straight travel book is the way to go if you’re going to present this material to a publisher. There’s so many of those already. It seems as if a major charm of your writing is that it’s so freewheeling and spontaneous, yet somehow purposeful at the same time. There’s a sense of organized chaos that’s all very alive.

While I have no doubt that you’re more than knowledgeable enough to write a travel book, I do think that limiting yourself to a form like “travel guide” or “TCK kid book” might kill that peculiar charm. It would be very easy to get bogged down by the chosen form, and that has the potential to get dull very quickly.

Another reason that I think it’d be a mistake to write a travel novel out of what you’ve got here is that—so far you haven’t got a travel book at all! You’re just writing about life as you’ve experienced it, and in your life you happen to have traveled a lot. It’s all presented as being very matter-of-fact.

I cannot begin to describe how refreshing this is. There’s nothing that makes me want to beat my head against the wall faster than another romanticized “I lived in rustic Italy, where problems just cease to exist!” or “My experiences traveling India, which is exotic and different!” autobiography/travel guide. Real life with all of its complications is always much more interesting than that, and your writing demonstrates this quite well.

To me, it seems as if you’ve already got a theme for all of your writings, and you’ve actually stated it somewhere on this site.

“You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.”

I think that as a TCK kid, you might have meant the focus to be on the “on the road” part of that song, but if you focus on the “become yourself,” then everything hangs together very nicely. The whole website is about the journey of your life–how you became yourself and continue to become yourself a little bit more every day. True, that’s a familiar theme because everyone does that in his or her own life. It’s an old theme, but I think you could make it work. You do have to admit that your life’s twists and turns make much more fascinating reading than the average person’s. *smiles*

- Would you buy the book? (assuming that at least 50% of the material in it is NOT already available for free on the site)

Absolutely, and what’s more, I would buy it even if the content were ONLY what was already on the site. I’ve often thought that this website would make a great book. I believe that you have a rare natural gift for writing. Your experiences and opinions jump right off the paper and spring to life not only because they are different or because they’re yours and they matter to you, but also because you have a talent for making them interesting and relevant to others.

Regards and best of luck,
Lena