Download or read book Revamp A Memoir of Travel and Obsessive Renovation written by Pamela Reynolds and published by Black Rose Writing. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A wisdom-filled memoir that doubles as a sweeping travelogue reaching from Boston to Sardinia and back again. Gorgeously written and culturally astute.” –The Boston Globe When a big-city journalist quits her dream job to move to a remote Italian island for love, she discovers a whole new life beyond the romantic fantasies of Italy spun by books and movies. Struggling to adapt to a different culture, she buys a quirky house in the Sardinian countryside, goes to art school and becomes obsessed with home improvement and renovation. Ultimately, her ex-pat adventure opens her world to making and embracing art in life and home, understanding, ultimately that home is where the “art” is.
Download or read book The French House written by Don Wallace and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On a tiny French island, a couple of American dreamers redefine their lives by restoring a ruin...The French House moves to a soulful, very funny rhythm all its own."—Meryl Streep Don and Mindy Wallace have always been Francophiles, so when they had the opportunity to buy a home on a small French island off the coast of Brittany, they jumped—sight unseen—into a crumbling mess that challenged their finances and their family. But when the Wallaces arrived on the island they found a building in ruin, and it wasn't long before their lives resembled it. Plagued by emergency repairs, a stock market crash, and very exasperated French neighbors, Don and Mindy could have accepted their fate. Instead, they embraced it. Redolent with the beauty and flavors of French country life, The French House is a lively, inspiring, and irresistibly charming memoir. Fans of Under the Tuscan Sun (Frances Mayes), Paris in Love (Eloisa James), and A Year in Provence (Peter Mayle) will be enchanted by this account of a family that rises from the rubble, wins the hearts of a historic village, and finally finds the home they've been seeking off the wild coast of France. What readers are saying about The French House "The French House is engaging and well-written and will make even non-Francophiles yearn for a trip to France." "With hauntingly beautiful descriptions of a tiny French island and its inhabitants, this book will take you to a different place, and might even inspire you to reconsider your life and finally follow your dreams where you and your family can become whole." "...charming and witty -- full of hope and despair about this crumbling structure they chose to inhabit and make a home." "I was captivated from the outset and felt like I was on their island living it all with them. A great read!" What reviewers are saying about The French House "Don Wallace has crafted a delicious French bonbon of a book...full of humor, hope, and lessons on how to live a life full of meaning."—Dani Shapiro, bestselling author of Devotion and Still Writing "Village life vignettes, the sensual celebration of island pleasures, eccentric neighbors, cuisine, beach life, natural history—readers will find a smattering of all that in these pages, but it's the story below, like the unshakeable foundations of the house itself, that makes this such a satisfying read."—Rain Taxi Review "The French House is a darling book that mixes local history, memoir, quirky characters, architectural challenges (what will the village elders do if they add windows to the second floor?) and humor...It was a lovely adventure and perfect for a summer read."—Under a Gray Sky "The French House is a detailed, delightful memoir of their journey to restore a dilapidated abode into a beckoning sanctuary in an idyllic coast French countryside.. I have thoroughly been devouring it, and I think you will too."—The Simply Luxurious Life "Author Don Wallace shares the heartwarming story about his family's 30-year journey to restore a ruined cottage on the tiny French island of Belle Ile off the coast of Brittany... readers are privy to the charming true story of a family's journey to create the perfect home away from home."--E! News
Download or read book L Appart written by David Lebovitz and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author and world-renowned chef David Lebovitz continues to mine the rich subject of his evolving ex-Pat life in Paris, using his perplexing experiences in apartment renovation as a launching point for stories about French culture, food, and what it means to revamp one's life. Includes dozens of new recipes. When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with perplexing work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen. In the midst of it all, he reveals the adventure that accompanies carving out a place for yourself in a foreign country—under baffling conditions—while never losing sight of the magic that inspired him to move to the City of Light many years ago, and to truly make his home there.
Download or read book Heads in Beds written by Jacob Tomsky and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Kitchen Confidential and Waiter Rant, a rollicking, eye-opening, fantastically indiscreet memoir of a life spent (and misspent) in the hotel industry. “Highly amusing."—New York Times Jacob Tomsky never intended to go into the hotel business. As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of career direction, he became a valet parker for a large luxury hotel in New Orleans. Yet, rising fast through the ranks, he ended up working in “hospitality” for more than a decade, doing everything from supervising the housekeeping department to manning the front desk at an upscale Manhattan hotel. He’s checked you in, checked you out, separated your white panties from the white bed sheets, parked your car, tasted your room-service meals, cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&Ms out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. In Heads in Beds he pulls back the curtain to expose the crazy and compelling reality of a multi-billion-dollar industry we think we know. Heads in Beds is a funny, authentic, and irreverent chronicle of the highs and lows of hotel life, told by a keenly observant insider who’s seen it all. Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on in the valet parking garage, the housekeeping department’s dirty little secrets—not to mention the shameless activities of the guests, who are rarely on their best behavior. Prepare to be moved, too, by his candor about what it’s like to toil in a highly demanding service industry at the luxury level, where people expect to get what they pay for (and often a whole lot more). Employees are poorly paid and frequently abused by coworkers and guests alike, and maintaining a semblance of sanity is a daily challenge. Along his journey Tomsky also reveals the secrets of the industry, offering easy ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle. This book (and a timely proffered twenty-dollar bill) will help you score late checkouts and upgrades, get free stuff galore, and make that pay-per-view charge magically disappear. Thanks to him you’ll know how to get the very best service from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds. Or, at the very least, you will keep the bellmen from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and bashing it against the wall repeatedly.
Download or read book Mistakes Were Made Some in French written by Fiona Lewis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mistakes Were Made is a revealing memoir and unexpected love story from model and actress Fiona Lewis about her journey to self-acceptance as she restores a crumbling French chateau. Alone in the French countryside, Lewis reflects on her glamorous youth across London and Paris in the ’60s, Hollywood in the ’70s, and the important, sometimes disastrous, choices she made along the way. Having lived a perfectly satisfactory life in California for over two decades, Fiona Lewis wakes up one day in her fifties and asks herself, Is this it? Is this the existence I’m meant to have? She can hardly complain. After all, her life has been full of adventure and privilege: London and Paris in the ’60s, Los Angeles in the heady ’70s. Now, however, she feels lost, as if she were slipping backward over the edge of a ravine, abandoned not only by her old self, but by that reliable standby, optimism. Realizing she has to find a way to reinvent herself, she impulsively buys a rundown chateau in the South of France. (Her husband is not pleased.) Alone in the depths of the countryside, she contemplates her childhood, her affairs––Roman Polanski, Roger Vadim––her years as an actress in some good and some questionable films, and her first Hollywood marriage to the damaged son of a movie star. As the renovation drags on, fighting with a band of impossible French workmen, she is forced to battle her own fears: her failure to become a real success, her inability to have children, and her persistent fear of aging. And she has to contend with her husband, who has no interest in the French countryside. In fact, he resents her obsession with France, with the house, with the renovations. The house seems to have a hold over her, and he’s not wrong. He reluctantly visits and is annoyed by the cost of the renovation. Was she not content with him in LA? Why can’t she just be happy? It’s an age-old question and one every woman must confront, along with aging, lost love, and missed opportunities. Yet, Fiona’s wit and wisdom prevail. And this provocative, brave memoir takes a stunning turn when all those unanswered questions develop into a tender and unexpected romance.
Download or read book Under the Tuscan Sun written by Frances Mayes and published by Crown. This book was released on 2003-08-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword “This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today For more Frances Mayes, including a tour of her now iconic Cortona home, Bramasole, watch PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special! More than twenty years ago, Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys—whether that be flying to a foreign country in search of themselves, savoring one of the book’s dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, or simply being transported by Mayes’s signature evocative, sensory language. Now with a new afterword from Frances Mayes, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Under the Tuscan Sun revisits the book’s most popular characters.
Download or read book A Year in Provence written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.
Download or read book House of Stone written by Anthony Shadid and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture and institutions.
Download or read book That Time of Year written by Garrison Keillor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”
Download or read book The Accidental Life Swap written by Jennifer Joyce and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘I haven’t laughed so much at a book for a long time.’ Whispering Stories Book Blog, 5 stars Sometimes one moment can change your life forever...
Download or read book The Caliph s House written by Tahir Shah and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By turns hilarious and harrowing, this work by an acclaimed English travel writer is the story of his family's move from the gray skies of London to the sun-drenched city of Casablanca, where Islamic tradition and African folklore converge--and nothing is as easy as it seems.
Download or read book Blaze of Memory written by Nalini Singh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-11-03 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nalini Singh returns to the Psy/Changeling world and its “breathtaking blend of passion, adventure, and the paranormal”* as a woman without a past becomes the pawn of a man who controls her future… Dev Santos discovers her unconscious and battered, with no memory of who she is. All she knows is that she’s dangerous. Charged with protecting his people’s most vulnerable secrets, Dev is duty-bound to eliminate all threats. It’s a task he’s never hesitated to complete…until he finds himself drawn to a woman who might yet prove the enemy’s most insidious weapon. Stripped of her memories by a shadowy oppressor, and programmed to carry out cold-blooded murder, Katya Haas is fighting desperately for her sanity itself. Her only hope is Dev. But how can she expect to gain the trust of a man who could very well be her next target? For in this game, one must die…
Download or read book Palladian Days written by Sally Gable and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of an influential villa by Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio that brings a sense of discovery to the Italian countryside and its larger national history. • “If a vacation in Italy this summer just isn’t going to make the cut, this book might be the next best thing.” —Chicago Tribune In 1552, in the countryside outside Venice, the great Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio built Villa Cornaro. In 1989, Sally and Carl Gable became its bemused new owners. Called by Town & Country one of the ten most influential buildings in the world, the villa is the centerpiece of the Gables’ enchanting journey into the life of a place that transformed their own. From the villa’s history and its architectural pleasures, to the lives of its former inhabitants, to the charms of the little town that surrounds it, this loving account delivers generosity, humor, and a sense of discovery. “Palladian Days is nothing short of wonderful–part adventure, mystery, history, diary, and even cookbook. The Gables’ lively account captures the excitement of their acquisition and restoration of one of the greatest houses in Italy. Beguiled by Palladio and the town of Piombino Dese, they trace the history of the Villa Cornaro and their absorption of Italian life. Bravo!” —Susan R. Stein, Gilder Curator and Vice President of Museum Programs, Monticello
Download or read book Wayward written by Dana Spiotta and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “furious and addictive new novel” (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life. “Exhilarating ... reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad.” —The New York Times Book Review Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"—that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life—and her family—as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female complexity in contemporary America. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird times, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins.
Download or read book Love Life written by Rob Lowe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the heels of his New York Times bestselling Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob Lowe is back with an entertaining collection that “invites readers into his world with easy charm and disarming frankness” (Kirkus Reviews). After the incredible response to his acclaimed bestseller, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob Lowe was convinced to mine his experiences for even more stories. The result is Love Life, a memoir about men and women, actors and producers, art and commerce, fathers and sons, movies and TV, addiction and recovery, sex and love. Among the adventures he describes in these pages are: · His visit, as a young man, to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, where the naïve actor made a surprising discovery in the hot tub. · The time, as a boy growing up in Malibu, he discovered a vibrator belonging to his best friend’s mother. · What it’s like to be the star and producer of a flop TV show. · How an actor prepares, for Californification, Parks and Recreation, and numerous other roles. · His hilarious account of coaching a kid’s basketball team dominated by helicopter parents. · How his great, great, great, great, great grandfather may have inspired everything from his love of The West Wing to his taste in classic American architecture. · His first visit to college, with his son, who is going to receive the education his father never got. · The time a major movie star stole his girlfriend. Linked by common themes and his philosophical perspective on love—and life—Lowe’s writing “is loaded with showbiz anecdotes, self-deprecating tales, and has a general sweetness” (New York Post).
Download or read book Better Than New written by Nicole Curtis and published by Artisan. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller For the first time, Nicole Curtis, the star of the megahit HGTV and DIY Network show Rehab Addict, reveals her private struggles, her personal victories, and the inspiring lessons we can all learn from them. Nicole Curtis is the tough, soulful, charismatic dynamo who for the past twenty years has worked tirelessly to restore historical houses, often revitalizing neighborhoods in the process. And also, in the process, drawing millions of fans to her television show, Rehab Addict, where they follow each step of the hard work and singular vision that transform the seemingly lost cause of a run-down building into a beautifully restored home. But there is so much more to this self-taught expert and working mom. With hersignature irresistible honesty and energy, Curtis writes about a project that every reader will find compelling: how she rehabbed herself. Better Than New reveals what’s not seen on TV—Curtis’s personal battles and her personal triumphs, her complicated relationships, her life as a single mother, the story of how she got started remodeling houses, and the consuming ins and outs of producing a megahit television show while keeping up with two kids, two rescue dogs, and countless tasks on her home renovation punch lists. Followers of the show will get an inside look at some of her most famous restorations, including the Dollar house, the Minnehaha house, the Campbell Street project, and the Ransom Gillis mansion. Part inspirational memoir and part self-help guide, Better Than New is a journey ineight chapters—each pinned to the story of a house that Curtis has remodeled, each delivering a hard-fought lesson about life—that takes readers to the place we all want to be: home.
