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I speak five languages. I have made zero money from it. It has not benefited my career in any way. I am glad I did it. I’m glad to have spent countless hours reading foreign literature for no other reason than the sheer joy of learning.

submitted 2 hours ago • 6 comments

A good partner does not have to share all your hobbies, but they are the person who loves your enthusiasm, who encourages your niche passions even when they don’t understand them. Their greatest joy is watching you do what brings you joy.

submitted 3 hours ago • 0 comments

You can buy any book you are looking for on the internet. But we need physical, independent bookshops because that is where you discover the books you were not looking for, and never knew you needed.

submitted 22 hours ago • 27 comments

It’s good to love mathematics and also makeup. It’s good to read the classics and watch Muppet movies. It’s good to see Shakespeare plays and collect graphic novels. It’s good to be curious about the world and open to new things without self-imposed limitations.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

“I am too old to learn how to do X.” Imagine how proficient you’d be at a new skill in five years’ time if your practiced consistently. Why not do it? Time will pass anyway.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

I see people reading lots of self-help books, but I wish more people read just for fun. Learn about dinosaurs, or astronomy, or 18th century French literature. Dare to “waste” some time to be curious about the world for its own sake.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

You don’t need a degree to write fiction, but you do need to stuff yourself with knowledge. Ray Bradbury never went to university but, in his words, he “graduated from the library”. It is never too late to graduate from the library.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Get a library card. Find a topic you are interested in. Check out some books. Make a habit of spending even just a few minutes reading every day. Your brain needs exercise, and you will find that there is much joy in learning on your own terms.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

I am now forced to write this middle-grade novel. I could have stopped a few years ago. Now, my protagonist is a real little boy in my mind. He is a person. I can’t bear to be the only one who knows him. I can’t let his story die with me. You need to meet him.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Writers, stop being intimidated by the blank page. Write your most deranged thoughts on it at 2 am, break every grammar rule, bend the laws of storytelling to your will, throw it all out, do it again. You and that blank page are not in some egalitarian partnership. You are a dictator.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

I’m at the family module of German Duolingo, and there are so many sentences like, “My mother is in love with your mother” and “my uncle is in love with your daughter”. I’m now invested in this drama and need to know more.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

People always ask me, “Why do you suffer the cold so much in England? You grew up in northern Italy; you have snowy mountains there.” Folks, it’s not the same. British cold is damp, it sinks into your bones. The wind is more intense. Winter in England is so much harder.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

I and my husband celebrated Valentine’s Day early, in London, by going to the National Gallery and to see some paintings by Paul Delaroche and Leonardo Da Vinci.

submitted 10 days ago • 2 comments

Oscar Wilde truly understood what life is about when he said, “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

I am still getting used to how here in the UK the fact that I am writing a middle-grade novel is taken seriously. My close ones think it could be published, and that it’s worthwhile. In Italy, where the book market is so small, I was always told writing was just a waste of time.

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

If you are writing a book, my advice is to have other projects/goals in your life. I have made so much progress on my novel since I started seeing it as just one of my creative outlets instead of the one project my entire sense of self-worth depends on.

submitted 14 days ago • 4 comments

I find it incredible that we now have little devices in our pockets with which we can read almost any book, research any topic, and learn any language. Make the most of this age of information. Get drunk on knowledge.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

Normalise changing life plans in your late 20s/early 30s, when you finally have enough information, self-knowledge and real-life experience to know what you want.

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

Yesterday I went to a bookshop and bought a translated novel by a Chinese author who used to self-publish online. When I was a teen, almost all novels in bookshops would be from the USA/UK. This shows the rising cultural influence of China.

submitted 15 days ago • 2 comments

An acquaintance recently told me, “Why do you wear makeup? People who read books like us don’t need all that superficial stuff.” We as a society truly need to get over that mindset and stop putting women in boxes.

submitted 15 days ago • 4 comments

I am re-reading this French children’s book about a girl who wants to be a ballerina and HATES studying. There is no “redemption arc” where she develops an intellectual interest. School is just not her thing. I don’t know if this would be allowed in a British children’s book?

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

I am reading a French middle-grade (in French). It is the furthest thing from a British children’s book. A girl and her servant fall in love with the same boy. The servant puts her blood in the boy’s drink. The mistress’s mother was once engaged to the boy’s father and hates him.

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

If you have watched Gladiator 2 and admired Lucilla’s earrings, I must inform you that they were called “crotalia”. It’s from the Greek word “Krotalus”, which means “rattle” (because the pearls would rattle with every movement). They were found during the excavations of Pompeii!

submitted 31 days ago • 2 comments

A friend of my husband’s who came to our wedding painted a picture of us. 😭❤️

submitted 31 days ago • 4 comments

I tried out those viral Korean makeup tutorials where you put blush on your forehead, nose, etc. It looks SO wrong on my face. It’s the look of a ruddy-cheeked Englishwoman pottering in her garden. I have the complexion of an Italian vampire rising from a Roman catacomb.

submitted 31 days ago • 2 comments

This is a post of appreciation for my husband, Dr Knight. He is the kindest English gentleman I have ever known, he makes me feel loved every single day, and he is always appreciative of my Italian cuisine. I am one of the luckiest women in the world.

submitted 34 days ago • 11 comments

The other day I was in a coffee shop in London with my husband. The waitress sounded Italian, so I asked her, in Italian and in my northern Italian accent, whether she was. She eyed me haughtily for a second, then replied, “Actually, I am Sicilian.”

submitted 35 days ago • 15 comments