Head Over Heel: Chris Harrison

I love to travel. I'm not sure when it started, but for as long as I can remember, I have felt the urge to wander the world. While I have seen a great many wonderful places, there is always somewhere new to experience for the first time. Since I can't actually afford to spend my money on travel, I read about it instead. Head Over Heel: Seduced By Southern Italy took me to one of the places I have longed to see, and am now more eager than ever to visit.

Chris Harrison met Daniela in a pub while both were vacationing in Ireland. It seems ludicrous to imagine that such a meeting could result in true love, but Head Over Heel is Harrison's love story. It's hard to say whether Italy is the backdrop for this romance, or if the romance is the setting for Italy. Chris does the unimaginable by leaving his Australian life to be with Daniela in Italy. What seems like a doomed idea from the very beginning, turns out to be a wild adventure filled with colorful landscapes and characters. Chris narrates his adventures in Italy, from the exciting newness of the small, seaside town of Andrano, to the dull days spent working in Milan. As Chris learns the complicated processes of becoming an Australian living in Italy, his love for the country waxes and wans, while his love for Daniela pushes him to pursue a future with her.

Having moved to another country for a short time, I am well acquainted with the challenges of learning a new country, trying to make it your own. Something as simple as buying a loaf of bread or finding an ATM can be exhausting and result in a complete meltdown. Harrison easily describes the challenges without reserve, illustrating the often humorous situations that foreigners find themselves in. There is so much comedy in error that the humor of this story is inherent. Even if you've never left your hometown, it's hard to deny a giggle when Chris describes his future mother-in-law, scolding him for owning underpants in any color other than white. The absurdity of Italy's many law keepers and their failure to protect Italy's many ridiculous laws, are described as a joke to Italians, and by the end of this book, I sympathized. 

Harrison brought his story to life in such a way that I also fell in and out of love with Italy. The foods, the people, the climate, the silly laws and superstitions, the dirty politicians, the helpful communities... Everything that Harrison describes is stimulating and exciting. I can't imagine reading this book and not wanting to see Southern Italy.

Rating: $$$

ARC received courtesy of Nicholas Brealey Publishing

The Sharper Your Knife The Less You Cry: Kathleen Flinn

Maybe it was the thumbnail picture of  the Tower d'Eiffel  on the cover. Maybe it was the enthusiastic quote by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love). Maybe it was the mysteriously dangerous title. Whatever the reason, I picked up The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn at the library book sale. The back cover said something about a woman on an adventure to pursue her passion at Le Cordon Bleu. I am only vaguely interested in cooking, but I am over-the-moon-in-love with all things French, so I hoped this read would immerse me in all things Parisian.

The story is somewhat familiar. Kathleen Flinn is unhappy with climbing the corporate ladder. She's a journalist who has been swept away into a career she doesn't even like. Fortune smiles on her and she is fired from her job. It turns out to be the best possible thing because it allows Flinn to finally pursue a lifelong dream--to earn a diploma from THE Le Cordon Bleu, in the beautiful City of Lights, Paris, France. She writes about her experiences, which vary from the mundane to the comically absurd. She meets an array of people from all walks of life, and is challenged in every way possible.

As a memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry isn't eventful. There are no real life lessons to be learned from this book, except maybe that we should always follow our bliss (which I'm hoping we've all learned by now, after the avalanche of uplifting memoirs about how great life can be when you do what you love). There is drama, there is comedy, there is love, there are shed tears and peals of laughter. There are eccentric chefs, and bizarre house guests, and friendly shop owners. There are also pages and pages of mouth-watering French recipes.

In short, unless you are passionate about France, food, or French food, this book doesn't have much to offer the average reader. However, if you get excited by a good cheese and wine pairing, or if you lose yourself in daydreams about walking the Seine by moonlight, this is a book to get lost in.

Rating: $$

The Geography of Bliss: Eric Weiner

The title alone was enough to catch my interest, but it was the subtitle that really hooked me: One Grump's search for the Happiest Places in the World. That pretty much sums up The Geography of Bliss. Ten chapters, ten counties, and a whole book of ideas on what it means to be happy.

Eric Weiner is a world news correspondent for National Public Radio and self-proclaimed grump. He has lead a successful career in the midst of a fairly unhappy life. After reporting stories from some of the most miserable places on Earth, Weiner wonders what it would be like to instead search the globe for the happiest places in the world. This leads to a consultation with Ruut Veenhooven, a Dutch professor and world renowned scholar of Happiness. Veenhoven and his cohorts have compiled a database that measures the overall happiness of every country in the world. Weiner travels to various counties and meets with locals (and some non-locals) to find out what makes a county happy, or more specifically, what makes for a happy person.

Though I took a long time getting through this book, I loved it. I'm a travel nut, and Weiner has an immense talent at describing a scene. He also writes with humor that had me laughing out loud on almost every page. The characters he meets--despite being real people, they are in fact characters--are wonderful, wise, charming people who each have a different set of beliefs and feel differently about Happiness as a goal. I couldn't possibly list all ten countries and tell you what Weiner learns about happiness in each one, but I can give you some highlights.

• Switzerland is one of the Happiest places in the world. This is largely due to their excellent timing, their large quantities of good chocolate (that would do it for me!), and their impeccably clean public toilets. Envy is the root of unhappiness, so the Swiss are very careful not to boast their wealth.

• Iceland is also one of the Happiest places in the world. They live in perpetual darkness and slide around on treacherous ice half the year. They drink themselves into a stupor on the weekends, and have faith only in their history rather than in any god. Icelandic people believe that trust is the key to happiness, so they choose to trust one another and therefore, behave in a way that is trustworthy.

• Moldova is one of the unhappiest places on Earth. It is a county without culture or money. The people are resigned to the way things are. They are neither Russian nor are they Soviets. The Moldovan people are all doom and gloom and don't work very hard at making any changes.

• Thailand is often thought of as a Happiness Paradise. It is tropical, with lovely beaches, and all of that Buddhism floating around is very relaxing. Because Thais believe in reincarnation, they aren't all that worried about what they do or don't do in this lifetime. They believe that thinking is the enemy of happiness. The moment that you think about what will make you happy, you have already lost happiness. Therefore, the Thais simply go through life trying not to think too much about anything, but just enjoying what IS.

Unfortunately, Weiner never did tell me exactly how to be happy. But his travels explained a lot about how the world views happiness and how people expect to achieve it. I may not have the answer yet, but I certainly have something to think about.

Rating: $$$

The Sunflower: Richard Paul Evans

The Sunflower is the story of an orphanage in Peru, called El Girasol (Spanish for The Sunflower). It is at this orphanage that a jilted woman heals from a broken heart and finds a new purpose. Richard Paul Evans is the author of several other uplifting novels, many of them with the underlying theme of God’s hand in the lives of mortal men. In The Sunflower, God’s hand is illustrated as the one most often questioned. A repeated quote in this novel is “Seek not your destiny, for it is seeking you.” Evans is emphatic that while we are planning our lives, God is conducting us in other directions. It is how Paul, a successful ER doctor with a fiancé and lucrative future ends up the director of El Girasol in Peru. It is also how Christine is dumped by her fiancé a week before the wedding and convinced by her best friend to go on a mission to Peru. It is how Christine and Paul’s life paths cross and become intertwined.

Evans is one of those rare writers who is able to evoke emotion in not only his characters, but his stories. El Girasol is a real place—an orphanage in Peru where Evans did some mission work and met the real Paul Cook who told his love story. So while the characters are real, it’s easy to give them depth and easier still to make the reader like them. It is the story of their romance that is so beautiful—how two broken hearted people can fall in love with each other in the dangerous Peruvian jungle.

The story is really a very simple one, without a lot of excess. It is simply a love story. The descriptions of Peru and the Amazonian jungle are inspirational and made me ache to travel again. El Girasol is a wonderful place where anything is possible for a group of orphans, as well as their director.

When You Are Engulfed In Flames: David Sedaris

David Sedaris is a short story writer who has gained a bit of notoriety over the years for his sharp wit and keen observation of the dysfunctional family dynamic. In reading some of his previous work, I was entertained and frequently provoked to compare my own dysfunctional family to the family he describes as his own. Sedaris doesn't hide the reality from his readers, rather, he illuminates how dysfunction makes a family what it is. I have never thought of his writing as funny at the expense of his family, but simply shining a light on some of the more humiliating facets of an average American family with the result of loving them all the more.

When You Are Engulfed In Flames is less about his family and more about the world at large. Perhaps it is the focus on others that makes me uncomfortable. Somehow, it's acceptable to point and laugh at your own family, but pointing and laughing at others is just cruel. In this collection of short stories, Sedaris does a lot of travel--Paris, London, America, Japan--and he manages to find something to poke fun of everywhere he goes--hygiene, language barriers, local customs, etc. At least he remembers to mention that he does plenty of things worth poking fun at as well.

The last story in this collection explains the title. It is called "The Smoking Section"; a recount of his efforts to quit smoking after a twenty-some year habit. This may have been my favorite chapter because of my personal relationship with nicotine, or because of the humor. In an effort to change his scenery and habits, Sedaris and his partner Hugh go to Tokyo for three months. It is a common belief that to quit smoking, one needs to change one's habits and hangouts. If only every smoker could afford to pick up and move away for three months!

My overall opinion is that while Sedaris is a witty and humorous writer, this particular collection relies too heavily on making entire cultures the butt of his jokes. Even when it's just a single person, he seems to be pointing and laughing in that big bully way that says "See? At least I'm better than that guy!"