Here's the thing. I loved this book when I first read it (was I 20? maybe 22...). Because I was young, and hadn't learned how to resent those people who gallivant around the globe with too much money on their hands telling us how charmed their lives are while describing the picturesque landscape. That being said, the book is well-written and the descriptions of Tuscan life are, of course, deeply seductive. Because that's the point: a life where you worry whether your wrought-iron gate is cast in period-appropriate design, or you wonder if the grape vines cascading down your porch are wine grapes or grapes for eating *IS* a seductive life. But reading this again while wrapped in the cynicism of my 30s, I just can't get excited about it. Again, the genre of memoir is partly to blame. But more than anything, I'm just supremely uninterested in reading about how fantastic, and rustic, and beautiful your life is. I'm giving it three stars not because I like it, as I'm not sure I do at this point, but because it is beautiful. How much of that is really just the landscape, I wonder.