A Thousand Days in Venice (Ballantine Reader's Circle) | 
 enlarge | Author: Marlena De Blasi
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $1.37
You Save: $12.63 (90%)
New (28) Used (70) Collectible (1) from $1.37
Avg. Customer Rating:  74 reviews
Sales Rank: 21469
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0345457641
Dewey Decimal Number: 945.31092
EAN: 9780345457646
ASIN: 0345457641
Publication Date: June 3, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Acceptable Condition. 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. EZ Return Policy. No Sale Ever Final. FAST Daily Shipping. (Z770)
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
He saw her across the Piazza San Marco and fell in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; and she, a divorced American chef, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thinks she is incapable of intimacy, that her heart has lost its capacity for romantic love. But within months of their first meeting, she has packed up her house in St. Louis to marry Fernando—“the stranger,” as she calls him—and live in that achingly lovely city in which they met.
Vibrant but vaguely baffled by this bold move, Marlena is overwhelmed by the sheer foreignness of her new home, its rituals and customs. But there are delicious moments when Venice opens up its arms to Marlena. She cooks an American feast of Mississippi caviar, cornbread, and fried onions for the locals . . . and takes the tango she learned in the Poughkeepsie middle school gym to a candlelit trattoria near the Rialto Bridge. All the while, she and Fernando, two disparate souls, build an extraordinary life of passion and possibility.
Featuring Marlena’s own incredible recipes, A Thousand Days in Venice is the enchanting true story of a woman who opens her heart—and falls in love with both a man and a city.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 69 more reviews...
Fabulous Romance, Travel log and Food Inspiration August 13, 2008
This is a fabulous - - fiction or non-fiction - I am not sure which - book. Almost a fairy tale type book. It which makes those of us who have never visited Venice - yearn to do so. I wanted to walk where she walked and especially eat all the delicious foods she describes. A fantasic risk she takes in moving there to be with "the stranger" and the story winds through their getting to know each other in a daring yet believable manner. The romance of it all brought tears to my eyes many times. I loved it. Can't wait to read the next in the series.
 Oh, to live there. . . July 18, 2008
This is the sort of romantic story you expect in the movies, not real life. To find your great love, almost by accident, in Venice, while walking through Piazza San Marco, seems impossible and yet that's exactly what happened to the author. Sharing this lovely story gives us all a chance to dream. And it isn't just ordinary sharing, but beautifully crafted description of a place that boasts an extraordinary amount of beauty. Not all is wine and roses for this implausible couple--eHarmony would never have matched them up--and yet it works on many levels and thanks to Ms. DeBlasi, we readers are allowed a glimpse into an inner life in Venice which leaves us wanting more--and luckily, following stories by Ms. DeBlasi provide that.
Great Read April 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I do rate it a five. Besides, I got a few extra ideas for dinner. What more can anyone want? It's a book about love, and the changes one makes in their life for love. It has a beautiful ending. I liked this book so well that I purchased several of Marlena De Blasi's other books.
Fresh start in Venice March 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was recommended as a better read than the current best seller, Eat Pray Love. While they are superficially similar, in that both authors love Italian culture, food and the joy of living, this book is more in depth at giving a flavor of Venice and background into Italian culture, through the eyes of an american visitor.
The author describes the many steps necessary to make the transition as an american into a country with ancient, almost ingrained customs. Her love of Italy, the food and the traditions, comes through with gusto.
This is also a memoir of an unlikely middle age romance, which is refreshing, even when things don't go smoothly within the marriage.
As a counterpart to studying Italian conversation and language, this is a wonderful book about Italy and Venice and Italy's people, and what they've survived. I have gone on to read the 2 subsequent books about the couple's travels and adventures in other regions of Italy.
Intelligent, not wasteful with words February 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I thoroughly delighted in this true story only after getting through the preposterous, high fructose corn syrup sappy, first 20 pages - factual though they may be. Having guffawed, rolled my eyes, and saying out loud to no one, "I am not reading this!" at page 12, weeks later I picked it up with my interest piqued and didn't put it back down until the end. Marlena is an intelligent writer, never wasteful with her perfect words and allusions. She was enraptured with her Italian settings and immersed in them, not distant from their ancient exoticism like so many authors who prattle on with some cold, repeated, textbook authority. I would read anything by her again in a heartbeat. There is purity and security both in her romance and her writing. Actually she is pretty inspirational by simply following her heart, her loves.
|
|
|
