In December, when I read that my local library was offering a book box program in 2024, I signed up right away. I was intrigued by the idea that each month, the librarian would create a personalized box for fifty people maximum filled with a few books and a treat or two and place them at the circulation desk ready for pick up. The surprise of chosen titles would hold my curiosity. And what’s not to like about a little sweet pairing? The addition of a snack would warm the reading hours especially during Midwestern winter days.
My book box would put a new twist not only on my visits to the library but to my reading routine. It would also give me something to look forward to when I returned from a January trip to Venice where its canals and lagoon would leave me intoxicated with inspiration. I was amused with myself for being excited about a box.
And here I am, returned from Italy, with the worst Venetian hangover I have ever experienced. Maybe it is from eating every possible kind of fish that lives in the lagoon, there are so many I stopped counting. Maybe it is from the thrill of boating the back canals of Venice on a private taxi that buried my wish to ride a gondola forever. Maybe it is from exploring Padua on my own one day and instead of losing my sense of direction, my traversing the city pointed me in a new direction. Maybe it is from revisiting and staying in a family-owned villa for nearly two weeks in a small town in the countryside of Veneto where I immersed myself with the locals and retained more of the language. Maybe it is from being obsessed with not just the afternoon Italian sunlight, but the way the sunlight accentuates the color palette of Italy, how that light creates a breathtaking backdrop for four Alma College MFA in Creative Writing graduates who chose to follow Italian tradition by wearing gorgeous laurel wreaths (another one of my obsessions) for their graduation ceremony. My sbornia veneziana is from all of this and so much more and I could have stayed longer. But it was time to come home to my husband and kids. I also knew my library book box was waiting.
Before I left for Venice, I filled out a short form so the librarian could get a sense of what I like to read.
What genres do you like to read? Biography, historical fiction, nonfiction.
These are my go-to genres. But with a new year, I am open to new experiences. So, I added a few genres I haven’t read in a long while: mystery, thriller/suspense, romance, realistic. The three choices I did not choose: fantasy, science fiction, horror.
What are some of your favorite books? The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, Next Year in Havana and the entire Cuba Saga Series by Chanel Cleeton, The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940 by Iris Origo.
I ended there because fact is, I have a lot of favorite books and authors. It is hard to know where to start and end.
Anything you don’t want in your books (i.e. swearing, graphic, violence)? This is a thoughtful question because some people can be negatively triggered by something that for someone else, is not a problem. But I left it blank because in my mind, this has the potential to ban a book that can teach me something or really have an impact on me. I learn from what I do not know.
What are some of your hobbies/interests? Cooking, travel, culture, nature, reading, writing, running, art, music.
On January 3rd, the librarian sent me an enthusiastic email telling me my book box was ready. She clearly loves her job. I thought, she created up to fifty personal book boxes and sent just as many personal emails. This is no small task. She is taking my reading on an adventure serving as my personal book selector. What appears to be a small literary luxury delights me. This is no surprise. It is always the simple things that bring me contentment.
I responded I was away and asked her to hold the box for me until the 16th.
Bundled up for the sub-zero temperature and with an overindulgence of tableside tiramisu made with a deep pool of espresso and whipped mountain of cream still lingering in my belly, I went to the library yesterday to claim my book box.
In my email response to the librarian, I had not mentioned where I had been. I had not mentioned my obsessions. But the minute I saw the box placed in front of me, I knew it was going to be the perfect cure for my slow re-entry to the Midwest after leaving a culture sewn with satisfying food, poetic language, passion, and sunlight.
My book box is not just an ordinary storage box. Trimmed in gold, it is not just a cardboard container personalized with my name. It is the Italian glow of the sun painting the chipped Murano brick wall on the edge of the lagoon at sunset and covering the top half of the front façade of Basilica de Santa Justina in Padua during the golden hour and striking the orange shutters of the blue lapis house near the leaning bell tower on Burano at noon.
My book box is Italian sunlight waking mourning doves, afternoon light filtering through sheer window curtains, and the last of evening light accompanying church bells from beyond a villa’s garden.
My book box is filled with a dark chocolate dipped biscotti and includes, To Sir, With Love by Lauren Lane and The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede.
Happy I didn’t ban romance from my selection, I started reading Lane’s book, a romance comedy. So far, it is a charming read. Gracie, the main character, is an unmarried thirty-three-year-old New Yorker who runs the family’s small champagne store after her father’s death (her mother died when she was young) and without the help of her siblings whom she has grown distant from in the four years since he died. Gracie takes pride in her superpower which she says is “the ability to accept and embrace things as they are not as I wish they could be.” In the beginning pages, she also explains how the family’s move to Manhattan after the death of her mother represented a fresh start for them and a way to navigate life without her mother’s imprint on everything. She continues, “But something weird happened when my dad drove the U-Haul over the Brooklyn Bridge and we were instantly surrounded by skyscrapers. Something inside me seemed to click—a sense of rightness.”
I’ve written about navigating life alone after both parents die. Since my mother died four years ago, I have searched for a sense of rightness with place and my surroundings. I flew to Venice just after the New Year to help with the Alma College MFA in Creative Writing winter residency as a graduate assistant. It was a fabulous writer’s trip. Little did I know though, like Gracie’s move, my travels would renew me in a particular way. Despite having visited Venice several times before, for the first time, I felt the sense of rightness Gracie describes which I brought back with me.
Who knows if I would ever find or choose this book to read if it weren’t for the librarian. There are so many books alive in the world it is hard to know what all exists! But the wonderful thing about books and genres is they find us just as To Sir, With Love found me.
It is waiting for me so I must go.
Until I write to you again, I hope the sunlight and a good book befriend you. Every day is a beginning. Rush slowly and be surprised.
Marie
The Birch Chronicle 
You must be logged in to post a comment.