Book Review: Beautiful Ruins: A Novel

Via

One of the most important things I do to prepare for a trip is download books to my Kindle. I always have lots of books preloaded onto my Kindle when I travel. I love books. I love to hold them, feel the pages in my hands, smell the ink and the glue of the spine; I love the entire experience of reading real books. But I don't like to carry a lot with me when traveling, so the Kindle is perfect solution for me.

One of the books I picked out for our recent trip to Arkansas was Beautiful Ruins: A Novel by Jess Walter. I have been eyeing this book recently and was excited to start reading it once the announcement was made that electronics were safe to use on the plane. (Why am I such a stickler for rules!) Beautiful Ruins is the tale of the entangled lives of screen actors, a novelist, a Hollywood director, his disenchanted assistant and, my favorite, an Italian innkeeper. This is the story of how life doesn't always follow a simple and clear path.  How the life we dream for ourselves, isnt' always the life we choose to live.

Part of the story unfolds on the rugged coastline of Italy, not far from Cinque Terra, which is a place I have always wanted to travel to. After reading this book, I am even more determined to visit this corner of the world and see for myself, the small and colorful villages clinging to the terraced mountain sides and the blue sea of the Italian Riviera, which were so vividly described in these pages. I will go here. I will.

I was completely engaged and didn't want to put it down, even when the flight attendant told me to for the second time. (She just didn't understand, I was reading!) If you are looking for a great read, give this one a try!