Hi Rick,

For a real Riveting book, try The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Alexander G Weygers - it teaches you to make your own rivets, as well as stone and woodcarving tools etc. .... ;^)

Tweed's Fruechen suggestion made me think of Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf, but you probably read that 30 years back.

Any of Gerald Durrell's books are a good light-hearted look at animals (and humans). From the way he described some of my Kiwi mates in Two in the Bush I now chortle even more than I did 30 years back over his characters from Corfu, Africa and South America.

Then, if you want some 'real bloke's' Italian politics, I've read Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo series so many times they have fallen apart.

All the above are available through Amazon.

All the best, mate - Sam