I know, I know. Book reviews are supposed to be about new books, books that are in the news, or even better, books that haven't even had time to be in the news yet. They aren't meant to be about books published in 1996, books whose film adaptations are already more than five years old.

I'm sorry. Sue me if you want to.

I've found myself lately, miraculously, possessed of time to read books I always wanted to read but never got around to.

It's amazing.

It's like being handed a do-over pass.

So if you've already read a dozen reviews of Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun, forgive me. You don't have to read this one. It probably won't add anything to the ones you've already come across. If you think you'll be bored, please stop now. I wouldn't want to put you through that.

Here I'll wait for you to leave before continuing.

Gone now?

Good. We didn't like you anyway.

Now the rest of us can get on with it.

I saw Under the Tuscan Sun for the first time probably about five years ago. I was browsing a rental store, and it seemed like a good choice.

I loved it.

It was one of those chick flicks that managed to not quite fall into all the chick flick cliches and still didn't end up depressing.

And it made me want to move to Italy. (It doesn't take much, admittedly. I quite often have strange longings to leave the country for some semi-exotic locale.)

(Or London.)

So when I came across the book while sorting some incoming nonfiction recently, I had to set it aside to read. (I'm not a nonfiction reader, but sorting nonfiction is slowly changing that.)

The book Under the Tuscan Sun, is quite different from the movie, but there are just enough familiar moments to make you smile when you come across them.

It's the story of a woman and her husband who spend their summers in Italy (And it's really tempting to hate them for that.), renting a different house each year until finally they decide to buy one of their own, prompting anecdotes of restoration and olive harvests and Christmas visitors that end up giving you a good glimpse of a life as a pseudo-expat and the unique culture of being an American living in a foreign country.

One of the highest compliments I can give a book is that it makes me want to cook. The Redwall books, which I read as a child, made me want to make mushroom pasties despite the fact that I don't like mushrooms and didn't know what a pasty was. A friend of mine recently published a book whose main character (a baker) made me want to make cupcakes for weeks on end.

Under the Tuscan Sun has given me an undeniable craving for Italian food. Ask my roommates. I've been cooking non-stop for days now. (They don't mind, by the way. They're looking for more books set in Italy.) Fortunately, Mayes includes two chapters with recipes that I have put to good use.

It's her vividly descriptive writing, though, that's really inspired me. She manages to describe a day spent in a small village, culminating in a dessert of fruit, gorgonzola, and roasted almonds sound so appealing that, even if I can't quite make it to Italy, I have to at least stop by the store the next day to pick up some almost-ripe pears. I was almost sad to finish it, knowing my cooking spree would soon dwindle out.

Maybe that's not enough to convince you to pick it up. Maybe you need more than the promise of recipes and midnight cravings for bruschetta. I can't really help you there. The book is a calm, comforting story of family and friends and most of all food, and it makes an excellent companion on a sunny day.

Just be prepared to spend the next few days barricaded in the kitchen.