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Books, Movies, Study

It happens whenever we travel.  The trip is over, but we wish it wasn't.  We want more...more information, more background, more sights, more food, more Sicily, more Sicilians.  Here are a few of the things we did to dig deeper into Sicily once at home.

Books & Movies

Ric Steves Sicily Book

Inspector Montalbano Books

I mentioned in my introduction to Palermo that several people in our tour group cited Inspector Montalbano as the reason they wanted to visit Sicily.  Who is this Inspector Montalbano?  As a reader, I was nonplussed at not knowing about Inspector Montalbano, afterall I was intimately familiar with Commisario Guido Brunetti (of Venice, by Donna Leon).  Shortly after arriving home, I checked my libraries.  Hoopla had nearly all of the 24 titles on audio book, and Multnomah County Library had printed books of the short stories and many of the novels, some in my preferred Large Print.  I set about devouring each and every book, listening to the audio books several times, supplementing the audio with printed books so I could learn how to spell words like pasta 'ncasciata and caciocavallo cheese.  I created scrapbook pages of all these readings since they became so much a part of my life  (scroll through two pages to see all the books, or click and scroll through larger versions).

Inspector Montalbano Movies

Somewhere, somehow, I learned that Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano books had been made into movies.  They are available in the US via a service called MHz TV, in Italian with English subtitles.  There are 34, 2-hour movies based on the novels and short stories, and they are brilliantly done!  As detective stories, they tend to be a bit complex, so I recommend reading the books before watching the movies, which means you will have to adjust to the very different look of Salvo as described in the books versus as portrayed by the brilliant Luca Zingaretti, but this is all worth it!  And if you still haven't had enough, as I hadn't, there is another series called Young Montalbano based on the early short stories, also wonderfully entertaining.  I understand you can stay in Salvo Montalbano's house when visiting Ponte Secca.  I so want to do this!

Insector Montalbano TV

More Movies

  • The Leopard - "everything needs to change so that everything can stay the same"

  • The Big Night

Study

One-page history of Sicily by Alfio

The Great Courses - Foundations of Western Civilization

This one-page history of Sicily packs it all into, well, one page.  It was developed by our guide Alfio D Mauro and referred to often.  During bus rides and prior to visiting sites, Alfio would use this visual aid to explain the context of the site in the long and complex history of Sicily.  If you understand this page, you understand a lot.  We only scratched the surface of this fascinating land.

The Rick Steves Sicily book was not yet available when we traveled in early 2019.  As soon as it was released in April of 2019, we ordered it.  Even if we don't travel to Sicily again, it has been useful as I've created my scrapbook of our Sicilian travels, or to look up some details we may have forgotten.  Plus, it was co-authored by our brilliant guide, Alfio Di Mauro, so we simply had to add this to our collection.

We've watched both Sicilian Delights and The Best of Sicily, available on PBS or on Rick Steves website, multiple times.

Diane Weber
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