Doerr, an author of a novel and a volume of short stories learns that he has been chosen as a Fellow for the American Academy in Rome on the same day that his wife gives birth to twins, Henry and Owen, in Boise, Idaho.  The tale of their year in Rome is a very funny, informative, and enjoyable trip through parenthood, an ancient and historical city, and the work of writing.  Doerr has a wonderful way with words, witty and clear with great images and metaphors.  While one would not wish to have twins, one does want to go to Rome described by Doerr as “It is the puzzle of Rome that mesmerizes: its patience, its stratigraphy, Tiber mud gumming up the past, wind carrying dust from Africa, rain pulling down ruins and the accumulated weighing centuries compacting everything tighter.”  Superb!  He describes the ‘too-muchness’ of Rome while Henry and Owen grow, the tsunami kills hundreds of thousands in Asia as a result of tectonic drift.  He quotes Marilynne Robinson:  “There are a thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them is sufficient.”  Another wonderful quote from a Tuscan monk  in1282, Ristoro d’Arezzo encompasses my great curiosity to know about everything:  It is a dreadful thing for the inhabitants of a house not to know how it is made.” Doerr also weighs in with his own wonderful observations on life:  “Not knowing is always more thrilling than knowing.”  “…a pen, a notebook, the urge to circumscribe experience.”  And a wonderful sequence about the writer and the reader creating a ‘world that seems complete in itself.”  He says that “A journal entry is for its writer; it helps its writer refine, perceive, and process the world. But a story—a finished piece of writing—is for its reader; it should help its reader refine, perceive, and process the world—the one particular world of the story, which is an invention, a dream.”