Italy conjures up vivid images of fine wine, elegant fashionistas and savory Mediterranean cuisine, as well as visions of passionate romance and cosmopolitan adventure. In Wendy R. Olsen’s new memoir, Loving Lardo, readers will undoubtedly be inspired to visit this European mecca for all of these well-founded reasons. In Loving Lardo, Olsen’s debut release, she retraces her life-changing decision to move to Italy for love and recounts her first decade in the country living with her adopted new family. Through her ventures, Olsen proves to herself that she can not only live amongst Italians but thrive there, buy a house, launch a business and give birth. An entertaining look into the European lifestyle, Loving Lardo is a touching story of personal discovery and transformation.
Olsen is a founder of Boswell Book Co. as well as the owner of Slinger Academy of Language and Arts in Slinger, Wis., where people of all ages can learn to speak Italian, Spanish and French. Of French origin, Olsen has lived around the world and has dual American and French citizenship. A true citizen of the world, Olsen speaks four different languages and lives by the motto, “Let’s help create a world with fewer borders.” Olsen will speak and sign copies of Loving Lardo at Boswell Book Co. at 7 p.m., Thursday, July 16.
Book Happenings
Major League Night
Tuesday, July 21
Miller Park, 1 Brewers Way
America’s pastime has been the topic of many movies, but Major League (1989) is on most fans’ top five list. Sports writer Jonathan Knight writes about the film and its legacy in The Making of Major League: A Juuuust a Bit Inside Look at the Classic Baseball Comedy. In his compact and lively account, Knight spends a good deal of ink on Milwaukee, where the old County Stadium was the setting for a climactic scene. Brewers owner Bud Selig was eager to help and the city and county were behind the project. Nowadays, CGI might be used to fill the stands with fans, but for Major League, thousands of Milwaukeeans volunteered to sit in the ballpark and act as if they were watching a real game. County Stadium is gone, but the Brewers are hosting a Major League Night timed for the book’s release in Miller Park on Tuesday, July 21.
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Wesley Chu
7 p.m., July 21
Boswell Book Co., 2559 N. Downer Ave.
Time Salvager by award-winning author Wesley Chu (The Lives of Tao) is a fast-paced time travel adventure. In this space-age novel, a toxic Earth has been abandoned and citizens now inhabit other planets in the solar system, but chronmen—convicted criminals with unique psychological make-ups—continue to undertake perilous missions back in time to recover Earth’s past. When chronman James Griffin-Mars makes the dangerous journey to the past, he encounters a female scientist who is destined to die. Despite his training, he makes the fateful decision to bring her to the future, a portentous decision that turns them both into fugitives. Chu is scheduled to appear at Boswell Book Co., 7p.m., Tuesday, July 21.
