Transcript / LoLT: Delightful Walking Tours and Two New Books — 06 September 2024

This is a transcription of LoLT: Delightful Walking Tours and Two New Books — 06 September 2024

[cheerful music]

Melissa: Coming up, the story of a bookseller in one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

David: A literary thriller with a philosophical bent.

Melissa: Plus, our distraction of the week. I’m Mel.

David: I’m Dave. This is the library of lost time.

Melissa: As you know if you subscribe to our Substack, our summer vacation to Croatia, Italy, and Paris was rudely derailed by covid. But it wasn’t all bad. We were able to visit my favorite bookshop in Venice. Instagram will tell you that you should go to Libreria Acqua Alta. That’s a used bookshop with stacks and stacks of books, some of them are displayed inside a wooden boat. At first it looks magical, but pretty quickly you realize the books are waterlogged, and it’s impossible to find any treasures among the messy piles.

Melissa: Now let me tell you about Libreria Studium. It’s just around the corner from St. Mark’s Basilica. When you’re among the pigeons and throngs of tourists in St. Mark’s Square, you would never imagine that this magical place is just a few twisty alleys away. It’s calm and peaceful and wholly civilized. The front room has a beautifully curated selection of English-language books, including a few shelves of novels and nonfiction books about Venice. There’s also a good selection of fiction and mysteries — and both times we’ve visited, I’ve found books I hadn’t seen anywhere else.

Melissa: Which brings me to a lovely novella — The Bookseller of Venice by Giovanni Montanaro and translated by Edward Williams.

Melissa: This is a very charming story about a bookseller named Vittorio. He was born in the mountains and moved to Venice for university. But a kiss from a beautiful Irish girl and her gift of the novel Moby Dick made him fall out of love with numbers and in love with literature. And for the last 20 years, he’s been the bookseller in the shop he named Moby Dick.

Melissa: I wish I could read the first three pages of this book to you. They are perfect. After our very voice-y narrator introduces us to Vittorio and shares bits of his background, he says this:

‘Vittoria lives not far away, where he’s lived since his student days, in a loft… which looks out over the red roofs of Venice, the Frari, the huge bulk of the Fenice opera house. His life is what he always wanted; you don’t get rich by being a bookseller, but that’s not what you live for, and if people were to ask him if he was happy, Vittorio would say yes. And particularly now that he’s fallen in love.’

Melissa: The rest of the all-too-brief 135 pages tell the story of our bookseller’s pursuit of romance and how it’s complicated by the catastrophic autumn flood — the acqua alta — that hit Venice in November 2019. This story is infused with a love for books and the people who read them, and it’s an ode to the beauty and resiliency of Venice. There are also stunning descriptions of Venice that will make you want to go there immediately. The author’s words made me homesick for Venice while I was still IN Venice.

Melissa: The author is a lawyer and was inspired to write this story by how the actual inhabitants of Venice pulled together in the aftermath of the flood to save books and their community. The book’s last few pages are a directory of all the bookshops in Venice.

Melissa: I strongly recommend going to Venice in person to get your hands on a copy of this sweet story. Until then, it’s available on Kindle. It’s The Bookseller of Venice by Giovanni Montanaro.

David: My book is ‘Creation Lake’ by Rachel Kushner. This book starts as a spy story. Our protagonist — alias Sadie Smith — was once an FBI agent, but she was fired after things went poorly on a case. She’s now a freelance spook, working for an anonymous organization. The book starts with her infiltrating a bunch of violent eco-activists in south France. They’re definitely saboteurs. Are they also terrorists? … We don’t know yet, but Sadie’s working on it.

David: The leader of the eco-activists is a man named Bruno Lacombe. He’s a wise, educated, passionate man who’s gone full hermit. He lives in a cave and sends out his thoughts in email. Sadie is intercepting those thoughts. Bruno has a lot to say about human prehistory and its relationship to the now. He argues that men have architected the world’s destruction – and the path to redemption lies in a return to primitive times.

David: And there’s the primary conflict. Will Sadie be swayed by Bruno’s idealistic and possibly persuasive arguments? Or will she remain cold and professional and crush these radical environmentalists?

David: The author, Rachel Kushner, is having a bit of a moment. She’s already been up for the Booker Prize, and twice for the National Book Award. The New York Times Book Review called her, ‘one of the most gifted authors of her generation.’ I have to say, if the New York Times Book Review called me, ‘one of the most gifted authors of his generation,’ I would be insufferable. ‘Excuse me! One of the most gifted authors of his generation would like some coffee over here, please! Thank you!’ This book just came out on Tuesday. It’s already been long-listed for this year’s Booker Prize. The Washinton Post called it ‘a thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit.’ It’s ‘Creation Lake’ by Rachel Kushner.

David: And now, our Distraction of the Week.

Melissa: One of my favorite things to do in a new-to-me city is to go on a self-guided walking tour. This summer, I learned about a company called Secret City Trails that makes sort of gamified city walks with an app — sort of like a treasure hunt for clues that leads you from one stop to another.

Melissa: The walking tours take you through parts of the city outside the typical tourist zone. Each walk is created by a local, and instead of providing turn-by-turn instructions, the app serves up a clue that requires you to really look at your environment. When you think you’ve found the right spot, you submit your answer to the app, and it tells you an anecdote or history of the sight you’re seeing.

Melissa: As a test run, we did a tour set in Prague. It took us through the Vinohrady neighborhood, which is within walking distance of touristy areas Wenceslas Square and Old Town Square, but is much more a locals neighborhood. It started in Namesti Miru, that’s Peace Square in English. It’s a triangular-shaped park with beautiful flower beds and an imposing neo-Gothic church — the Basilica of St. Ludmila. Our clue was a little verse about a statue in the park, and once we found it, we were supposed to walk down the street where the statue was pointing. It took us a few minutes to find the statue, even though we’ve been to that park dozens of times — but in looking for the statue, we also had to really look at all the details of the park. [DAVE] When we arrived at the base of the statue, we submitted our answer and got a little story about Namesti Miru in return. Then we followed the statue’s pointing finger to look for the solution of the next clue.

Melissa: That tour took us up and down residential streets we hadn’t previously explored. We saw a baroque building that had once been horse stables, learned that a famous Czech writer had lived in one of the houses, and walked through one of Prague’s most beautiful parks to a panoramic view overlooking vineyards and orange rooftops.

Melissa: There are tours in more than 50 European cities, including capitals like Edinburgh, Budapest, Rome, and Vienna, and other cities like Florence, Delft, Malmo, and Cologne. Some destinations offer multiple tours. So in Venice, for example, there’s a tour of the Cannaregio district, a tour of the city center called ‘a labyrinth of mystery,’ and a walk around San Marco that is all about what the guidebooks left out. Lisbon has a tour focused on fairytales, and Barcelona has one that explores secret alleys.

Melissa: The experience is designed to be fun and interactive. The app has settings to send the game to up to five people’s phones, so you can do the walk with a group. The tours take around 2-3 hours, and there’s an option to pause, so you can stop along the way for a cafe break or to take photos. Each tour costs between $20 and $30. They also have cute gift cards and bundles that would make an excellent present for your favorite traveler.

Melissa: Our next trip is to London, and I’m pretty excited that there are seven tours we can choose from… or do all of them!

Melissa: Visit strongsenseofplace.com/library for more on the books we talked about today and links to the delightful walking tours from Secret City Trails.

David: Thanks for joining us on the library of last time. Remember to visit your local library and your independent bookstore to lose some time yourself.

Melissa: Stay curious. We’ll talk to you soon.

[cheerful music]

Top image courtesy of Sabrina Mazzeo/Unsplash.