Travels with Alice Book

Calvin Trillin seems like someone you'd like as a friend. He's witty, full of good stories, and can appreciate the smaller pleasures the world has to offer. His writing suggests that it's better to be warm, amusing, and inclusive than edgy, preposterous, and bigger-than-life. This book ties together anecdotes and observations from various trips he, his wife Alice, and their girls had taken through the years. Local cuisine was often a focus. My own wife and I liked Alice's criterion for judging the gelati in Italy. (Crema is the perfect numeraire.) I also thought Trillin's tip for fitting in at a Paris café was useful. (It involved staring abjectly into space muttering, "Quelle ironique.") As a family, they enjoyed staying in the same out-of-the-way town in France every summer, indulging in local pleasures such as table-top foosball. Reading Travels with Alice we see the virtues of a more laid back approach to life, sans glitz. [Note to self: read Trillin's homage to Alice written after she passed away - sure to be affecting.]