I’ve been rereading Under the Tuscan Sun, enjoying it as much as I did the first time around. I am finding myself savoring the language, and feeling myself being pulled to Italy, to slow down, stay a while and enjoy the language, the landscape and the food. (I am also finding myself wishing there was more than one sense employed when reading; I want to touch, smell, and hear this book as well!). I don’t normally consider myself an Italy person (preferring France and England and China in my literary pursuits), but this book is written well enough that it pulls me there.
When they arrive it will be the soft, slow Tuscan twilight, fading after drinks from transparent to golden to evening blue, then, by the end of the first course, into night. Night happens uickly, as though the sun were pulled in one motion under the hill. We light candles in hurricane shades all along the stone wall and on the table. For background music, a hilarious chorus of frogs tunes up. Molte anni fa, many years ago, our friends began. Their stories weave an Italy around us that we know only through books an films.
This book demands you slow down, you enjoy the prose, you savor each moment as it unfolds.
Which has got me thinking about savoring. Too often, and sometimes with good cause, I find myself propelling through books, either because I’m clamoring for the next development in the story or because I just want to finish it. I vary rarely slow down and enjoy the scenery, so to speak.
I’m not sure I’d want to do it all the time, but I find that right now, in these lazy late summer afternoons, this is what I really need. You could say that I’m savoring it.
Is there a particular book (or books or genre or author) that just demands you savor?
The Book Nut 
My current read, The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin, is like that. The writing is absolutely exquisite and I'm finding that I want to slow down (as much as I want to not put this down in order to find out what happens).
Glad you're enjoying Under the Tuscan Sun (again!) I didn't have the same experience with this particular book, unfortunately.
And how funny … my word verif for this post is “savic.” At first glance I thought it was “savor.”
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Yes! Savoring is so hard to do while the plot is unfolding. This is precisely why I am such a believer in re-reading. The second time around, when you know what's coming up, it is much easier to slow down and enjoy the scenery.
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Melissa — it's interesting, also, which books call to which people. I suppose that's part of the reason why I'm glad there's so many books out there! Life would be boring if we all liked exactly the same books.
Julie — I hadn't thought of rereading that way. I'm not a big rereader, honestly, preferring to read as much as possible (trying to make a dent in all the books I *want* to read). Now I'm wondering what I missed by going so fast…
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Under the Tuscan Sun is the perfect book to slow down and savor! Would love to reread that one myself.
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I have a question or 2. Hope you all don't mind;) Do you ever not finish a book you bought. After you read a book that you bought what do you do with it? Do you read a book and watch the movie from that book? In what order? My answers are I always finish a book I bought-it may take me awhile. After I read it I usually pass it on to someone I think who would enjoy it. I don't ever read a book than watch the movie-I would always rather read.
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Lorinda: 1. I vary rarely buy a book without reading it first. (Exceptions only for books that are not the first in a series, and I liked the first one enough to buy it.)
2. I am interested, generally, in the movie form of books, even if I'm disappointed. I usually see the movies after I read the books, if I can.
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frances hardinge comes to mind in that i savor her metaphors. i could even be reading her aloud to the daughter and i will re-read a sentence or paragraph to follow with a sigh. considering the length of the two of her books we own, this elicits a different sort of sigh from the daughter.
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Hi Melissa, I like your blog. It's inspiring. I agree, it's hard to savour a book no matter how great it is because of the quantity of great reads out there. There's an Australian book called Eucalyptus that I reread just before I moved away from Australia, and really savoured the descriptions of the burning land and the trees that inhabit such a desolate space
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