Books
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Required Research: Under the Tuscan Sun
If you really want to feel, smell and taste the poetic essence of Tuscany, you must devour this book. Frances Mayes, the best-selling author of the 1996 novel “Under the Tuscan Sun,” knows how to make a cozy nest in any space. Half the year she lives in the historic Chatwood, originally built by Quakers as a dignified Federal farmhouse in the early 1800s as a commercial and residential space. Hillsborough has been Mayes’ American home now for several years with her fellow poet/writer husband Ed. She continues to spend half the year in Cortona, Italy, the inspiration for many of her books. Fans first fell in love with Mayes…
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Required Research: A Room With a View
Before venturing into the bellissima chaos of your wedding adventure, one must set the tone of mystery and romance. There is no better way to jump into this world than to (re)watch Merchant-Ivory’s exquisite A Room with a View from 1985. Based upon the 1908 novel by E.M. Forster. A Room with a View, the film is set in both the Florentine and the English countrysides. Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter), a young Englishwoman, makes her first visit to Florence, Italy in the early 1900’s with her spinster aunt, Charlotte Bartlett (Dame Maggie Smith, most recently of PBS’s Downton Abbey), who chaperones her young niece with a discerning eye . There, she meets a quiet yet eccentric young man named…