This was a really enjoyable read, spending time with the owner Alba of a rural bookshop in Tuscany!! Everyone thought she was mad opening a store in a village with only 180 people, but books had always been her life and in the book she shares more of her family background to see where her love of books started from, along with the history and family stories that mean so much to her.

life in the bookshop is not without some drama, covid and a fire to name but 2, but it was lovely to read how the locals came together to help along with support from the online bookish community.

It's told in diary form so nice to see day to day what is going on, along with the book titles she sells that day as well as books recommended so it's a really nice mix of a family memoir and book memories.

For six months in lockdown, from Jan to Jun 2020, poet and bookseller Donati kept a journal of her daily sales and activities, slowly renovating the bookshop, cultivating the garden, curating her catalogue, and connecting with readers at a time of social distancing.

This is a book that reminds you to slow down and look for little glimmers of beauty around you. This is also a book that leads to many other books, as Donati's diary is full of bookish reflections and recommendations.

I absolutely adored it and I will definitely revisit it as a comfort read.

In this book we read a real diary kept by Alba in that period that affected us all, during the Covid pandemic, and tells us about her daily life full of books, friendships, meetings, beautiful people, historical events, special teas and writers. The beautiful thing is that she had the courage to open a bookstore in a village with only 180 residents!

A beautiful story, very Italian, very feminine. However, although many of the stories are personal to the author i.e. her family, the history of the small town of Lucignana, and titbits about various authors, I found myself generally disappointed in the text.

I began to be more interested in the books she listed, than in the experiences of her day-to-day life. As a poet and book publicist, the authors comments certainly reflect her astute perceptions of the literary world and those who contributed to it.

The perfect escape. I loved everything about this book - form the sun-soaked villages to the comfort of books to the stresses and strains of setting up a new enterprise and starting over. Inject it into my veins.

Initially I thought this book was fiction so it was a bit of a surprise to see that it was non fiction. I found it a little difficult to get into to start with but then quite enjoyed the story of how Alba Donati left her life in Florence to start a small bookshop up a hill in Tuscany. It is a very comforting read and quite heart warming too. I would like to have found out more about the customers and their lives and perhaps a little less about the author. Thankyou Netgalley for letting me read and review this book.

A beautifully packaged, beautifully told story of the beginnings of a bookshop in Tuscany.

This is a wonderful book in which to lose yourself for a few blissful hours.

Alba Donati left a life in publishing in Milan and returned to her family home in Tuscany where she opened a tiny bookshop. This is her account of those first six months.

There are only 180 residents in the tiny village of Lucignano yet still Alba Donati decides to open a bookshop.

It is incredibly small (when I did a search on the internet, it seems to be no bigger than a large summer house in the garden), but Alba's vision and passion for books leads to a loyal following.

People come from all over Tuscany and beyond to visit the bookshop and browse her recommended reads. She also selects treats for booklovers (marmalade and tea with flavours suited to famous authors or book titles, for example).

Running the shop hasn't been without its challenges though. There was a fire soon after opening and then the lockdown in the pandemic. But Alba has persevered and delights in serving her customers in the local community or by mail all over the world.

After each day's diary entry, Alba lists the books she has ordered for customers that day which is a lovely touch. These are a mix of popular and lesser known books in Italian and English.

I didn't want to stop reading this book. It was wonderful to picture the Italian sunshine and the hilltop view, to imagine sipping tea and eating cake before browsing the pages of a title handpicked for me by the bookshop owner. I hope to return there again and again!

Come here for glimpses of how a bookshop manages to run from a piddly little premises, designed just as much for Instagram and the traditional media as it is the book-buyer, in a village of 180 people in the Tuscan hills. Come here if you must (because you never got to live through the bloody thing yourself) for the fact this is going through coronasniffles lockdown, and the five months we cover here, as part of the shop's second year of activity, could be the worst commercially due to all the restrictions in place. Come here, if you desire – although that's highly unlikely – for a mishmash of family history, this house and that house, and the reportage of the extended family in easy flashback and trivia-seeming detail alike.

Yes, come here and we get three short books in one. For me I was here for the bookshop, and I didn't take to this one with its naff colouring and rampant misandry. Pointedly pretty, if crammed with potential delights, the real thing we see more easily through googling images of it than through these pages might well be able to sway me. But the list of books sent off from online orders, given us to unbidden at the end of each day's entry, is interminably precious, and uses a ridiculously small pick of authors. This is an uber-curated, personal kind of bookshop, using local child "voluntary" labour as cost-saving exercises, florid with twee book-adjacent "gifts", and as a result it was kind of too easy to not wish it that well.

And I just don't do disliking of bookshops. From this forgettable thing? I was kind of forced to.

This is a charming book. I suspect reading it on a kindle (app) does not do it justice, and as it’s a memoir, I think a few photos would be appropriate.

But Alba Donati’s words about the view from Lucignana, and her bookshop, should be sufficient. It is a glorious location, and a bookshop with facilities the literati and more avant garde reader will relish, not to mention book tourists!

Written as a daily journal, liberally peppered with the history of her family, and her own adventures prior to setting up the bookshop, each day ends with a list of books sold. These fascinated me. I think the best part of this book is the opportunity to discover new things that you’d like to read or own, or give to a best friend… And there’s this bookshop in Italy you can order them from!

I think the only one I’ve read is What You Can See From Here, which I reviewed summer 2021. If that is typical of the rest, then I really ought to search them out. Many are famous, and most English majors will have read them. Italian, French and German majors who include literature ditto.

As the bookshop opened just before Covid-19 hit us, it gives a good flavour of the numerous set-backs it suffers. Details vary, as priorities change during lockdown, and the family and next-level relatives take precedence. I got a little lost towards the middle of the book, or else my attention waned. But I got interested again a little further on, possibly at the time of the civic vandalism involving trees.

If you like books, Italy or memoirs, you’ll enjoy this. A combination of the three would be even better.

Donati appears to have opened her bookshop in a tiny Italian hill town just before the Covid lockdowns. She was told it was a ridiculous thing to do, to open a shop in a town of about 800 people, but she did it, through a crowdfunder. Then, when there was a fire, the community helped her again, and there was another crowdfunder. She has people work for her, I think as volunteers, and visitors somehow from all over Italy, as well as a thriving online ordering regime. In addition, an English expat helps her after Brexit when she can't get certain things in from the UK.

The books she mentoins being ordered and being her favourites fall into a small group of mainly women writers, lots English, some continental, and she certainly seems to stock what she fancies stocking, not what might sell. She also stocks book-related items (tea bags, stockings ...) and much of her energy seems to go into sourcing those. As well as all this, she has old friends and family members, a failing mum and a distant dad, a daughter who comes and goes and, somewhere, a husband, as well as various houses and buildings in the village.

The houses are what got me confused, as she talks about different ones and it's not clear where she's living, storing books, etc. She flits back to her childhood memories, as you would, setting up a bookshop in the town you grew up in. There are echoes of Shaun Bythell's memoirs, not least in including a list of all the orders that day, and she does mention him several times. I'd still recommend his, but this is a nice meditation on life, authors, bookselling and community.

I wanted to love this book. Reading the blurb I thought it was right up my street. A woman who is round about the same age as me decides to open a bookshop in a small Italian village. What book lover has not dreamt of opening a bookshop? And who among us would turn down life in Tuscany?

I was disappointed. It took me weeks to read the book. I wasn't drawn to the writing and it felt more of a chore than a pleasure. That said, I did warm to the writer. Her heart is most definitely in the right place and she was very open and honest throughout. She talks about the relationship with her parents and this is particularly poignant especially with regard to her mother.

All in all the book had a disjointed feel to it. Characters were introduced and there were so many of them it was hard to keep track. Every day ended with a list of books ordered and while this was interesting at times, for the most part the books were ones I had not heard of so this might be of more interest to an Italian reader.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I thought this book was absolutely gorgeous. I love book related memoirs and have devoured all of Shaun Bythell's brilliant bookseller books. This one was even better; what it lacks in humour, it more than makes up for in its honest, intimate style. You feel like the author is chatting with you, really opening up about her thoughts by speaking them aloud on the pages. Inspiring and delightful.
With grateful thanks to NetGalley, Orion Publishing Group and the author for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

As the title suggests, this is the diary of an Italian poet who leaves her city life in Florence to pursue her dream of being a bookseller in her home town. Slowly but surely the bookshop on the hill becomes the heartbeat of the village, and through the diary of Donati we are let in to her every day life and the people who make it possible.

I loved the building of Donati's world. The people who have and continue to allow her dream to become a reality; those who have become family and who, through the bookshop, pass their love of reading onto their children. I really did become very attached to the 'characters' - especially when you remember that they are real people with real stories.

One of my favourite things is reading about others' love for reading. The way Donati integrates books into her daily thinking and perspective on life was so gorgeous and inspirational. She has such a clear love for the written word, which bleeds into her poetic and lyrical musings on seemingly mundane and routine parts of life.

I would love to re-read and recommend others pick this up in Spring as we emerge out of hibernation into warmer days. I did feel it was slightly repetitive at times, especially by the end, but this feels like a minor point in comparison to how I felt taken care of while reading. This was the thing that made me keep picking it up - it was such a comforting read.

If I am honest I was not sure what to make of this book. I had not realised it was a true account nor had I realised that the author was a poet.

I did enjoy the descriptions of village life and the characters who lived there - locals and ex-patriots. I enjoyed meeting her family - her 102 year old mother, her siblings and many relatives.

The bookshop - quirky, individual, different - a real community affair. It survived fire, the pandemic and the 30% of locals who opposed its existence to thrive and inspire readers.

I almost became immersed in its development against my will and sorry once the book ended.

A testament to the value of community, dedication and a love of books.

Snippets of Italy, snippets of Alba's family and snippets of a gorgeous little bookstore at the top of a hill, who must be as gorgeous and idealistic as it sounds.

Tanta tenerezza, nostalgia e un grande desiderio di vivere di nuovo in Italia! Grazie Alba!

Thank you for advanced copy

What a truly beautiful book, isn't this just a dream to open a bookshop like this.

Well written, great translation.

Highly recommended

I'm always drawn to a book about books, especially bookshops. Unfortunately, I didn't love this book. I enjoyed it, it was in interesting read and a great insight into another country, but it just didn't flow right for me. This could be to do with the translation possibly so doesn't take anything away from the actual story, more the way its told.

I was totally drawn in by the title alone on this book. It falls right into my sweet spot of a book about books. I had no expectations other than knowing that it would be up my alley, but I was left disappointed.
I really struggled with the writing style throughout this book. It felt less like a diary and more like a brain dump of the author's thought-cycle. There seemed to be no real structure to what was being written, which meant that I wasn't able to fully connect to any of the people mentioned or with the shop itself. At times it felt like a memoir, then jumped to a short essay on the author's inspiration and intention with her shop, the moved again into a somewhat banal commentary on what was happening around her on any given day. This was not helped by the lack of formatting in the unedited proof copy that I was reading, as several of the day markers were missing, making it hard to determine when a new day had started - the only giveaway over time was that each day seemed to end with a summary of orders.
What I did enjoy about the book was the author's clear passion for the written word. It is evident in how she writes that she uses the words of others to help herself make sense of the world. She obviously has many friends in the literary world and it was lovely to see someone make books their way of life, not just a hobby or a career.
I also appreciated how well she switched between light and dark. On some days she wrote about something as simple and transient as the flowers that were growing in her garden. On other days she wrote about her complicated relationship with her parents, or how her village was handling the Covid pandemic, or the meaning of life and death. The switch between the two felt effortless and helped keep the book feeling somewhat dynamic in its content.
A clear passion-project for the author, but not for me.

'Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop' is an utterly charming and inspiring read. It's a love letter to books, and to the hometown of author (and bookseller, and poet) Alba Donati. It's also a road map, showing how a fledgling business survived a global pandemic whilst trading in Lucignana - an Italian village with a population of just 180 people. The book details Alba's background, her journey and the community spirit which helps her little store to thrive. In addition, she shares with us the orders she receives each day, resulting in a book which is jam-packed full of literary titles to explore. It's a truly lovely, transporting read and the bookshop (Libreria Sopra la Penna) is going straight to the top of my bucket list. I leave you with a quote from Donati herself, which I believe beautifully encapsulates the nature of this book:

"I like books that make you discover other books - a virtuous cycle that should never be broken."

Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop is the translated journal-style book of an Italian bookshop owner. Each chapter is a blend of local life, the village and area, visitors to the bookshop and is followed by books that have been ordered that day. This makes it a mix of travelogue, personal account and list of books. The combination is wonderful but takes a little getting used to. I found that I would have liked a little more detail each of them but this didn't stop the sense of being there and experiencing the challenges that the author has experienced to maintain her business.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I love the idea of this bookshop but, somehow, it didn't quite 'gel' with me.

Returning home to the small village of Lucignana in Tuscany, Alba Donati turned away from her life as a publicist in Florence to make her dream of opening a small bookstore a reality. With almost everything against her - not least the small population of less than 200 - she manages to open and make the bookstore thrive, despite setbacks along the way. This is her story.

Opening a small bookshop in such a remote location seems like such a risky business, but I was surprised to find that it was crowdfunded - not once, but twice after a fire destroyed half the store and much of the stock. It all seemed terribly idealistic and, as someone who owned and managed a small business, I have to say that asking others to fund my dreams never occurred to me. How simple to start a store when your own money isn't at stake. That aside, it's admirable that so many people travelled so far to support this venture but it was always tainted for me and I struggled to find enthusiasm throughout the novel. Disappointing and, for me, a three star read.

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley; this is - as always - my honest, original and unbiased review.

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley; this is - as always - my honest, original and unbiased review.