Alba Donati

This is a highly recommended book and unfortunately I have no idea which thread I saw it on.
It is the biography of Alba Donati when she decided to open a bookshop in her 170 soul village in the Tuscan mountains in 1999. She tackled this project with great enthusiasm and love for the place and its people. With fundrising and the support of her craftsmen, she succeeded. She was soon able to open the tiny little bookshop. She also has a website where you can not only see the wonderful garden to linger in, but also her book recommendations. These are quite something, she always writes at the end of a diary entry which books she has sent. On the one hand, this is very interesting, on the other hand, this recommendation has given me dozens of books that have now ended up on my library list and that I will gradually borrow.
There were also setbacks, such as the pandemic, which was particularly bad in Italy, and her first bookshop burning down shortly after opening. But none of this could stop them and it seems that their project is a great success for everyone.… (plus d'informations)

Alba Donati is a poet in Italy, and this book is written in diary format recalling a 6 month period in 2021, 2 years after she opened her bookshop in a remote mountainous village in Tuscany, the village of her birth. It's an imperfect book, but has enough to save it and make it worth a read.

Firstly the flaws. This is a story of community in the Italian hills as much of one of the bookshop (that's a plus, more on that later), and at times I felt Donati over naval-gazed. Sometimes her writing felt a little egotistical, and whilst I'm happy to take on board some self-promotion, it was missing a touch of self-deprecation here and there to balance things out. She also had a habit of throwing in the names of locals who I'm sure where referenced for the first time but spoken of as if we, the reader, must surely know who she was talking about.

My biggest gripe was that the supposed triumph of the bookshop in a remote village of 180 people also was never fully explained beyond Donati weaving some sort of bookselling magic. That's all well and good, and kudos to her, but I'd like to have understood the gaps in the story. How did she make it economically viable (and was it? In the 6 months chronicled, Italy was in and out of COVID lockdowns)? Does she excel at social media marketing (which is where I'd lay my bets)? Is the physical shop carried by its online shop? Is she a big enough name as a poet in her own right in Italy to make people want to make the pilgrimage to her bookshop? Donati sells it heavily around the plum tree in the garden, the flowers and the tea and buns. I've Googled it and it looks charming with a wonderful view (and what reader doesn't love a quaint bookshop), but both the garden and shop are tiny so I'm still wondering why people would make huge journeys from other corners of Italy just to buy books there. These are predominantly Italian customers; there are wondrous views-a-plenty all over that part of the world...

Was it savvy social media content encouraging women in particular to have FOMO over the experience Donati is marketing? Was it the COVID effect - an excuse for a lovely day out after weeks in lockdown? I'm happy for her, but please fill in the blanks!

Anyway, beyond that griping, I did enjoy both the virtual transportation to the Tuscan hills and the stories of the visitors to the bookshop and what they bought. If you have watched or read any of Dan Buettner's content on longevity blue zones, he talks about mountainous Italian villages where people live to ripe old ages on the back of daily physical exercise up and down steep village streets and vertiginous stairs in houses that cling to the side of hills. Also, how the innate sense of community and belonging keeps people happy in their old age, with the whole village engaging daily with their elderly neighbours. I got a strong sense of this from Donati's descriptions of her mum, who celebrates her 102nd birthday during the period chronicled, and it really does leave you with a sense of longing to be lucky enough to live somewhere so beautiful with such a strong sense of togetherness.

Donati concludes each diary entry with a note of the books ordered that day (again, no explanation - are these books bought in the shop or ordered online? There's no more than a handful each day - I can't imagine that paying anyone's rent). I took at least a dozen book bullet hits from these which I enjoyed - quite a few titles and authors I'd not heard of before.

4 stars - I'm not sure Donati left me wanting to make a pilgrimage to see her, and but nonetheless it was an enjoyable read, and I enjoyed my transportation to beautiful Lucignano.… (plus d'informations)

I loved this book. There is a quote from the book itself that describes why I think it was so good. Donati writes:

"People want stories. It doesn't matter who wrote them; they need stories to take their mind off things, stories to identify with or to take them elsewhere. Stories that won't hurt, that will heal a wound, restore trust, instill beauty in their hearts."

This book managed to take my mind off things, I identified with the author's love of books, it took me away to a gorgeous, small town in Italy, and it absolutely instilled beauty in my heart.… (plus d'informations)