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bethanymplanton's review
4.0
Four Seasons in Rome is an honest, funny, lovely, enjoyable memoir about Doerr's year in Rome with the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Doerr brings the same excellent story telling ability to this memoir as he does to his fiction.
amalies's review
5.0
As a young mom, I appreciated hearing the story of a man and the first year of his twins life. I think I really related to this travel memoir because it happened the exact same year I lived outside the United States and experienced the hate of foreigners to Americans, I have recently lived through the hard time of infancy with a child, I understand he complications of moving somewhere not knowing the native language, and had many people think I was crazy for leaving behind my life for the reasons I moved. It was a great mixture of site seeing, sleepless nights and his professional life. I listened to it on audio by the author himself and appreciated hearing the Italian he learned. I hope to never join the ranks of raising multiples and he made all my contemplations on how bad having two infants at once, real.
dmsreader09's review
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
I enjoyed reading this book not only because I've been to Rome, but because I understand what it's like to live overseas away from everything you know. And I couldn't imagine doing that with 2 little ones in tow, which made his experience a completely different one than mine. Anthony Doerr's writing style is very literary and you can tell he writes to convey meaning and a sense of wonder. It was a quick and easy read and I probably could have done it in one sitting if I had the time to do that. Even though I liked the book, I wouldn't put this on my re-read list.
enigmadame's review
2.0
Not really sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this...seemingly series of essays. I’m not the biggest fan of short stories, and while this had an underlying theme, it didn’t really seem to be leading anywhere. I was most drawn in by the Catholic Roman things, so maybe that’s another reason I was disappointed? My mom recommended it so I figured it would be heavily Catholic. I don’t even think the author *is* Catholic. And then there’s the ever-present I-tend-not-to-like-authors-that-win-awards thing I have going. I don’t like good writing apparently 🤷♀️
maureenr's review
4.0
Lovely short little memoir of living in Rome for a year with his wife and infant twins, moving from Idaho - that is a brave thing to do! Although he was in the process of writing All the Light We Cannot See, he doesn't talk about it very much at all, so don't read this for any insight into his process. I enjoyed his descriptions of the city (although the descriptions mostly make me happy not to go to Rome - too busy and dirty and intimidating!), and the way he weaves the craziness of parenting twins throughout. As a bonus for me, he mentions going to Spello, a town in Umbria, which I will be going to this June. It's a good listen on audio, and Doerr reads it.
literarylawgirl's review
5.0
Pack your bags as Anthony Doerr sweeps you off to Rome with his wife and newborn twins where he will begin the research and notes of what will eventually become his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See. This book is a sensory celebration of Rome, its history, its food and its people- dare I say a travel guide of sorts. This book is also a tale of the struggles and joys of keeping twin baby boys alive and healthy in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and with very limited sleep. And finally, this book is a writer’s manual detailing the laborious intricacies and process of researching subject matter, constructing and reconstructing a sentence, a paragraph, a story. You have a front seat into how writers create beautiful prose, step by step. For all who have read his novels, you already know how lyrically and vividly he writes. His choice of words brings images, sounds, smells and the emotions of the setting to life. The reader is fully immersed and transported with all five senses on overdrive. To add to the experience, I was listening to opera (Vittorio Grigolo) while reading this book and truly had no idea what was happening around me.
The number of inspiring quotes that are in this small 200 page book is absurd, so I’ll try my best to choose just a few:
“Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor--it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.”
“Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We’d pass out every time we saw— actually saw— a flower. Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs.”
“A good journal entry- like a good song, or sketch, or photograph- ought to break up the habitual and life away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.”
“Not-knowing is always more thrilling than knowing. Not-knowing is where hope and art and possibility and invention come from. It is not-knowing, that old, old thing, that allows everything to be renewed.”
“(Rome) is a Metropolitan Museum of Art the size of Manhattan, no roof, no display cases, and half a million combustion engines rumbling in the hallways.”
“Whoever says adults are better at paying attention than children is wrong: we're too busy filtering out the world, focusing on some task or another, paying no attention. Our kids are the ones discovering new contents all day long.”
The number of inspiring quotes that are in this small 200 page book is absurd, so I’ll try my best to choose just a few:
“Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor--it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.”
“Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We’d pass out every time we saw— actually saw— a flower. Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs.”
“A good journal entry- like a good song, or sketch, or photograph- ought to break up the habitual and life away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.”
“Not-knowing is always more thrilling than knowing. Not-knowing is where hope and art and possibility and invention come from. It is not-knowing, that old, old thing, that allows everything to be renewed.”
“(Rome) is a Metropolitan Museum of Art the size of Manhattan, no roof, no display cases, and half a million combustion engines rumbling in the hallways.”
“Whoever says adults are better at paying attention than children is wrong: we're too busy filtering out the world, focusing on some task or another, paying no attention. Our kids are the ones discovering new contents all day long.”
fiberreader's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
relaxing
medium-paced
4.0