Daffodils Are Out
March 1st, 2011
Yesterday, I picked all the bright yellow blooms I could carry and now they’re on my kitchen counter singing hallelujah. My three cherry trees are about to don their bridal veils and the tiny blue irises are coming up in clumps along the spring. Lo, the winter has passed, at least here in North Carolina for the moment.
Also popping out at my house are new covers for my books and the paperback of Every Day in Tuscany. The new covers make them seem like brand new books. Even though my mother always said not to, I do, initially, judge a book by its cover. The new one on A Year in the World makes me want to rush for my passport. I’m imagining a plunge in that infinite blue water.
That tiny beach behind the rocks looks intriguing. The cover brings back the pleasures I had when writing the book and traveling to all those places I’d long dreamed of.
The other covers–thank you Broadway Books!–are equally vibrant.
The occasion for the covers is that Every Day in Tuscany is coming out in paperback. I can’t imagine that it has been a year since the hardback was published. See the TOUR at the top of the blog. I will be at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Georgia Center for the Book in Decatur, Malaprop Bookstore in Asheville NC, Randolph College in Lynchburg VA, Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, at two restaurants in Kansas City for Rainy Day Books, and at National Geographic in Washington DC. Please, if you live near any of those, come say hello! I’m excited about being on the road. I always meet so many fantastic people, get a chance to see new places, and to sample the food of the area. This trip, I am thrilled to be speaking in connection with the George Inness in Italy exhibit in Philadelphia. Also, it will be a wonderful nostalgia trip to visit Randolph College (formerly Randolph-Macon Woman’s College), where I went to school eons ago. At National Geographic, I’ll be on stage in conversation with Don George. Everything on my tour looks fun. A fine spring. I think I’ll go read A. E. Housman’s Loveliest of trees the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bough. . .
