Review: Passeggiata: Strolling Through Italy

Passeggiata: Strolling Through Italy by G. G. Husak is a travel memoir about the many trips to Italy taken by the author and her husband. She chronicles their visits to all the well-known places, including Rome, Florence, and Venice, as well as many smaller towns and out of the way locales. This is not a travel guide - you won't find any names for the hotels and restaurants she visits - but a first-hand account of what its like to visit a country often enough to begin to treat it like a second home.

There is a lot of charm to this book, and it made me want to pack my bags and plan a trip for Italy as soon as possible. I loved the chapters about places I've already been, as they reminded me of some great memories, and I loved the chapters about places I had only heard of, as they gave me a real sense of what it would be like to visit.

My strongest criticism is that this book could have used more editing. The book is arranged so that while many of the chapters focus on a single trip or location, several focus instead on a single topic, like art or music. This is a nice idea, but created a lot of repetition. For example, a description of the standing room audience at the famed La Scala opera house was included in the chapter on Milan and then again in the chapter on music. I just think this kind of repetition dragged the book out a bit.

Although I do think this book could have been even better, I thought Passeggiata was a delightful look at travelling Italy.

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