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"The Banker's Wife by Cristina Alger" Prologue " At London RAF Northolt airport, very few planes were cleared for takeoff. The crosswinds were strong; the downpour of sleet reduced visibility to nil." From the first line, you're sucked into the suspenseful novel. I look forward to getting back to reading it today. Maybe "sucked in" is a poor choice of words. rosecityreader.com

Back and forth to Italy to New York, the rich characters in Adriana Trigliani's novel are followed through their marriages, births, and deaths. We learn to appreciate the Italians love for family and beauty in the Italian Alps. The author makes the reader comfortable while learning the Art of Shoemaking, while learning a bit about Catholicism and dressmaking and also, the culture of cuisine and music.  The thoughts in the novel do not take away from your beloved culture. The stories within The Shoemaker's Daughter add to your life story. All of us who live on Earth seem to at one time or another live through wars and the deaths of those whom we love. Enza, a wife, and Ciro, her husband, and others live in such a way that their hardiness finds a place in our hearts. We want to live, grieve, leave and question as they so gracefully do on the mountain. I did have a question about the Priest Gregorio. One of the main characters Ciro sees the Priest in a delicate moment that sho

"She sat looking out of the windows for some time. Then, she turned to me and said; "I suppose it must be quite difficult to tell people. About Keiko, I mean." https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kazuo-Ishiguro businessinsider.com/kazuo-ishiguro-nobel-prize-literature-books-biography-201

"...There was no rest. There was no peace to be made with death. Conversations steered around it. Some men asked their fellow soldiers to shoot them if they were left without limbs. Others vowed to turn their guns on themselves if captured. It seemed every soldier had his own ideas about how to control the outcome of war, knowing he was powerless to change what fate had in store for him."

"I realized an eternal truth: death makes people hungry. Either because they've decided to embrace life to the fullest in the wake of another's death, or maybe because they don't know what to talk about at such an event. In any case, the guests made a nice dent to the food. No one held back."

"For weeks now I'd been visiting the book almost daily. It was a little embarrassing to continually beg the bookstore owner to let me hold it, page through it, study it. I just wanted to touch it, stroke it, and once, when he wasn't looking, sniff it. But he didn't seem to mind my fixation. He's as big a book nerd as I am." I love this series.