Under Six Feet of Cold Dirt

Books like Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence—among many others*—are missing the whole point about what is best about living in Europe. You don’t go to Europe to find some better way to live in the suburbs—the worst idea of civilization in 5,000 years; you go to find the perfect life in the city, the place where people live and have been living happily. Why do people think that what they really need, what will make everything better in their lives is to “get away from it all?” Do you want “to get away from it all?” I sure as hell don’t. What do I look like? The Unibomber? It's like people just want to retire and fart around the garden until check-out time.

*although the other books weren’t as obscenely popular as these two and don’t deserve the any harsh criticism.  Somewhere South of Tuscany by Diana Armstrong, Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart, The Olive Farm by Carol Drinkwater just to name a few along the same lines.