For those of you who travel, you know it is hectic and after a long flight ALL we want to do is get our luggage and head to the hotel. When I landed in Milan//Linate Airport I went to Baggage Claim. It seemed like we were waiting forever for luggage to come out. That is when I thought, maybe I should find a place to sit. As I looked over to the bench area I saw what appeared to be a “book shelf.”
Suddenly, I wasn’t in a rush for the luggage, because I was in “exploring mode.” I love books and was pleasantly surprised to see that this airport had a “book sharing” post.
What a “brilliant idea!” I had just finished a book on the plane and was wondering who I could give it to. My plan was to leave it at the hotel, but THIS was even better! I started browsing through the books. Unfortunately, the selection was disappointing. The books were ALL in Italian (of course), but they were high level academia type books, which I found interesting. Not one novel to read or any children’s books.
Sadly, this meant two things. First, the airport has not promoted the “Book Fly Zone” area enough. Second, maybe with most of us being able to read ebooks, people are not traveling with hard cover books anymore, so there is nothing to share or donate (hard to believe). What a shame! I would have LOVED a book from a different country/author to read while on my trip.
I did add my one book. I hope someone snatched it up.
Let’s make this work. If you travel through Milan/Linate airport, plan to donate a book. I know I will again!

I’ve always been fascinated by eagles. It started when my father got frustrated with his four kids for working too slow or not thinking fast enough on the building site. He would shake his head and say, “How can I soar with eagles, when I am flying with buzzards!”

creating illustrations in black/white that capture Sing’s adventures.
Are you trying to learn Chinese and you are overwhelmed with how many characters you would need to learn? While there are 50,000 characters, a Chinese friend told me that for basic reading I would only need to learn about 3,000 of them. My head was swimming in a sea of characters, only need to learn 3,000? I had a thought that training to climb Mt. Everest might be easier.
He cleverly writes his story teaching us Chinese characters by adding them into the illustrations, so we can visually remember the Chinese characters in a humorous way. Here I show you a few pages from the book, so you can better understand what I mean.
book shares his life story and collection of paintings. It’s a beautiful book, one that should be put on a coffee table and shared with others.
Have you ever thought about how the color of the year is chosen? I’ve always wondered, but as I am not in the design industry never looked into it. However, throughout the years, I would walk through stores “thinking,” I guess this year it is egg plant purple, sunny yellow, cherry red, etc., because every store was using the same color for their products.
On to 2017! I am excited to start the new year. Of course, there is reflection on 2016… what we accomplished, what we might have missed out on, happy moments, challenging ones, and more.
Have you heard the news? Florence, Italy is coming to the big screen this month. Dan Brown’s book, “Inferno“ has been turned into a movie. My mother was born and raised in Florence, so I was pleasantly surprised when I turned on the Today Show (October 20, 2016) and was just in time to see this clip, “
If you’d like to learn more about Florence, you can visit The Florentine 

Being the popular book that it is, the bookstore was out of Sun Tzu’s, “The Art of War;” however, they had a business version called, “