Gina Collia-Suzuki's Blog

I first came across Arthur Probsthain, Oriental & African bookseller, in 1986. I was in London to visit the British Museum for the first time, and I was sixteen years old. It was a rainy day - somehow London always seems more Londony when it rains - and my heart gave a little flutter when I first spotted the bookshop's hanging sign. I was obsessed with Japanese prints, but no local bookstores stocked books on the subject, and it was back before the Internet took hold of us and provided the op...

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I was quite taken aback by myself today. Ever since my books first came out, I've been so busy working on other projects that I haven't really had much time to sit back and take in what's been going on around me. The books have had great reviews, and I've been very happy about that, in the few seconds before falling asleep when I had a quiet moment to think about something other than my next paragraph. The signings have gone incredibly well, and for the duration of the car ride home I've been...

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Anyone who's read any of my previous blog posts knows that I am not a floaty, fluffy, 'it's all sunshine and moonbeams' kinda gal when it comes to this writing malarkey... I'm a realist. I'm all for realism. What I'm not a great fan of is scaremongering codswallop. So, the publishing industry's going through changes... has that never happened before? Book sales are down and, apparently, the end of the physical book is in sight... well, we're in the middle of an economic recession... money spe...

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"Are your books doing as well as you hoped they would?" I have been asked this question so many times, and I haven't once been able to answer it. I have no answer. In order for my books to do as well as I hoped, I'd have had to hope in the first place. I was told by a very dear friend, when I was sixteen years old, that there's no money to be made in writing about art. He'd been doing it for years, and was very well respected in the field... he knew what he was talking about. I listened to hi...

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On the subject of food again, I don't often talk about the fact that I'm a vegetarian. When the subject does come up, I'm usually asked how I came to be a veggie, and my answer is always the same... 'I once murdered a chicken.'

The roots of my vegetarianism lie in the year 1972, in a village in southern Italy. I am half Italian (Calabrese to be exact), and my grandmother had a farm (like Old MacDonald). On that farm she had some goats... and chickens. She also had a granddaughter who, at the a...

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The illness that resulted in my brush with death in 2007, being somewhat mysterious (as I couldn't possibly fall prey to a boring and predictable one), resulted in me developing various unusual food allergies, cutting down the number of foods I was able to eat without breaking out or choking to death to about three. It's amazing just how boring, not to mention frustrating, mealtimes can become when you are faced with the same few meals day after day after day. I even had to avoid eating choco...

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Yesterday, following the shoe incident, we headed off towards Boulevard Saint-Germain, stopping off at Notre Dame along the way, partly because we always pop in there (with me being a bit of an architecture nut) and partly because it was so hot that we feared we might be roasted alive where we stood if we stayed outdoors. My photographs can't convey the scale of the cathedral's interior... it's awe inspiring, even with the large groups of tourists and countless flashes going off left, right and

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We were just about to hop on the metro to head off to Notre Dame when all of a sudden my shoe exploded. Well, perhaps it didn't explode exactly, but it most certainly self-destructed. I have never seen a shoe fall apart in such a dramatic fashion... and it certainly isn't something I'd have expected from a Hush Puppy. The lower sole broke into two pieces, the upper sole came away from it, and the central padding fell out, right there on the platform. So, there I was, with my footwear thinking it

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Although we've been coming to Lille for a decade, we've never actually been during the summer, usually choosing to visit in December when the Christmas market is here, along with the Ferris wheel, decorations, and the festive music ringing out across the Grande Place. Whatever the season, Lille is always an excellent place to do a spot of shopping. Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Kenzo, and a multitude of other famous names can all be found in Lille.


There are stores selling just about everything, cateri

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I'm feeling rather chipper tonight, sitting here in my Lille hotel room and praising the dear fellow who invented air conditioning. You see, one of my blog posts that I posted at Red Room was chosen as a featured post... and I won a book! Click here for more about the Red Room competition. I haven't actually won anything like this since I was seven years old and entered a Mister Men competition. Back then, I won a poster and a copy of 'Mr Small' and 'Mr Bump'. Oh, how I loved Mr Bump, with his b

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