Bookshelf: 'Sea and Sardinia' and 'Reeds in the Wind'

The essential pre-trip volume for Sardinia is D.H. Lawrence’s “Sea and Sardinia.” This short work describes the weeklong train journey that he made around the island with his wife, Frieda, in 1921. Though his tone is frequently exasperated and grumpy, Lawrence’s observations about the area and the character of the Sardinians are as astute and amusing today as they were almost a century ago.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) was born in the central town of Nuoro. Her fiction vividly depicts life in small-town Sardinia, and her characters are often challenged by the severity of social conventions. Her best-known book is “Reeds in the Wind.”