This blog post is a few days early, because this week is a bit different to usual: I'm going to New York. I set off this evening, and about 26 hours later, after a coach ride, a night in Milan airport, a plane, a train and another bus, I arrive in NY.

This will be the first time I visit America, something I've wanted to do since I first read a Judy Blume novel aged about 9. And it will also be the first time that I meet many of the people at my American publisher who have worked with me on The House at the Edge of Night. My agency WME and my US publishers, Penguin Random House, have also organised a special event for the book, so I'm looking forward to meeting US bloggers, writers and journalists on Tuesday and introducing The House at the Edge of Night to some of its first prospective readers.

As a writer, there will always be particular people, especially at your agency, your home publisher and also if you have other editors working jointly on the book, who you get to know well and who may even become friends and lifelong allies. But there will always be other people who do so many important things - like designing the perfect cover, or contributing just the right editorial comments, or advocating for the book with readers in their country so that people around the world know about its existence - whom you never get a chance to meet. So for me, this trip is a chance to visit some of the people in the US who have worked alongside me on the book, and catch up with others who I've already had the chance to get to know, and say thank you. The second suitcase in the picture is full of Italian chocolates and may be confiscated at customs, but if it arrives I'm looking forward to sharing them with everybody at my US publisher over a glass of Prosecco, and thanking them in person for all the passion and enthusiasm they have put into the book.

And the first thing I'm going to do when I arrive? Go to a diner. Believe it or not, this is a lifelong dream of mine. (My husband, who is half American, can't understand why I am excited about this.) European readers, I'll report back...

Recently, an odd thing happened which made me think about the complexities of learning a foreign language. I was writing a scene, and I wanted to use the word sfondare, meaning to break through something in a particular way, for instance dropping a heavy anchor through ice or breaking a bucket by filling it with too much water. The problem was, the word was in the wrong language. And when I thought about it, I couldn't find an English equivalent. In the end I went back, filled the gap with '[to revise: broke through / plumbed the depths of]', and thought no more about it.

But later, this small episode made me think more deeply about the process of language learning. As a writer, language is the medium through which you move most comfortably and if you're not careful you can fall into the trap of thinking that language and thoughts are the same thing: that expressing a more complex idea is simply a matter of learning more (English) words. First you learn sad, happy, angry, scared and later outraged, bashful, diffident, ambivalent. Talkative isn't quite right? Try garrulous, loquacious, chatty, conversational. In theory, you might know that all languages have their own particular set of nuances and capabilities. You might understand that often a non-English phrase is more or less elegant than the English version, like two images of the same thing that don't quite map onto each other. You might even read books in other languages and notice certain details that seem to have fallen into the gap between the original and the translation. (The same phenomenon as watching a subtitled TV show with a friend who knows both languages, and who keeps pointing out to you how rubbish the subtitles are). But perhaps it's only when you end up split between two languages, as most people in the world are, that you start to fully appreciate how different the mood, emotions, history, culture and sense of place belonging to one language can be from another. So, in celebration of all the things that the English language can't do, as well as the things it can, here are five of my favourite Italian words which I can't use in my writing because they're in the wrong language...

1. adeguarsi, meaning to change or adapt yourself to something: a challenge, a difficult situation, an altered set of circumstances, or even 'the times'. Literally meaning 'to adequate oneself'.

I first heard this phrase on a TV programme when a character was talking about a change in circumstances and the difficulties that he anticipated: 'Devo adeguarmi alla situazione,' he said. The meaning was instantly clear. To 'adequate yourself' to a situation is not just to adapt or conform to it, but to attempt to rise to that situation, to make yourself equal to it, perhaps with a bit of resignation about the change. Which is a much more clumsy way of putting it than adeguarsi.

2. meno male, meaning (roughly) 'Thank goodness!', 'just as well' or 'luckily'.

On paper, meno = less and male = bad, but that doesn't match the useful economy of this phrase. You can put it at the end of a sentence when you want to add a note of relief to what you've just said: 'Her house burned down, but she'd taken out insurance. Meno male.' Or at the start, to mean something like 'Just as well that...' For bonus points, add it to something someone else has just said: 'She finally broke up with her boyfriend.' 'Meno male.'

3. boh! / beh! Interjections that mean, respectively, something like doubt/incredulity and doubt/ disapproval. Also, sometimes, 'I don't know'.

People often claim these words are untranslatable, which isn't strictly true. But it's certainly the case that translating them doesn't take account of the myriad different situations in which they can be deployed to express various kinds of doubt. It's the kind of understatement that British English, for all its indirectness, doesn't really have.

4. rendersi conto, roughly meaning 'to realise' but in the specific sense of taking account of something which you hadn't previously appreciated or understood.

There's another way, in Italian, to say 'notice/realise' (accorgersi), but when you say mi sono reso conto (I realised) you are also, sometimes, talking about a deeper sense of realisation and understanding. In English, you can say things like 'I gradually realised what was happening' or 'I understood and properly took account of his situation for the first time', but that's about as elegant as it gets.

5. prego, figurati, ci mancherebbe, etc. Various phrases for when you want to graciously brush away someone's thanks.

If the owner of a bar rushes over to clean your table as you sit down, or offers you a glass of tap water without asking because he saw you hadn't ordered a drink and thought you might be thirsty, and you thank him profusely, he might say 'Prego' or 'Figurati' or 'Ci mancherebbe'. Roughly meaning that you don't need to thank him because he takes it for granted that he should do whatever he just did for you. Whereas in British English, we're limited to various awkward phrases like 'Don't be silly' or 'Of course' or 'I'm more than happy to' or 'It was no trouble'. Which are so unwieldy that they draw even more attention to your kind gesture, and the other person often then feels compelled to say something like 'No, no, but it really was kind of you', and then we end up replying, with even more emphasis, 'No, no, of course, don't be silly' - and if we're not careful we get stuck in an endless loop... A simple figurati! is much more straightforward.

Those are just a few of my favourite Italian words that don't (quite) exist in English. Let me know your favourite untranslatable phrases in any language. And if you have a better English translation for sfondare, meno male, ci mancherebbe or boh I would be very grateful to hear that too...

Last week I wrote about how I’ve been looking forward to reading In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri. This week, the task was to find a copy. The book has only just been released in the UK and US, so the whole process turned into a bit of an adventure, and along the way I got the chance to explore a few of Turin's bookshops. Here are five of them (and one library!).

​1. Mondadori

I started with the biggest bookshop! Chain bookstores here in Italy are different to those in the UK and USA, because they mostly belong to publishing groups rather than being independent companies. This one near where I live, Mondadori Megastore, is no exception: Mondadori is one of Italy’s biggest publishers (and the company who published my young adult books in Italian many years ago!). It’s a good place to visit if you are looking for Italian-language books, especially modern best-sellers, textbooks or language-learning books, or if you want to buy book-related items like notebooks, pens, greeting cards and e-readers (this particular shop also sells computers, phones, toys, gifts, and – in the basement – an unexpected collection of cooking equipment!). But no copy of In Other Words…

2. Feltrinelli

This is another chain shop belonging to an Italian publisher, this one hidden away under the arches in the main square, Piazza Castello. They don’t have many English-language books, but they do have a big range of fiction and non-fiction books in Italian – when I came here looking for a local recipe book a few weeks ago, the assistant found four or five for me to choose from!

​3. The bookstalls on Via Po

Via Po is one of the most popular places to buy books in Turin; here, you can find all kinds of bookstalls, under the porticoes of one of the oldest streets in the city. This is a great place to find books of all kinds, and even though I knew they wouldn't have a copy of In Other Words (all the books here are second hand), I couldn't resist making a detour past the bookstalls anyway.

4. Libreria Dora Grossa

I like this bookshop partly because it’s one of the first places I ever visited in Turin, on the first day I arrived, when I was looking for a city guidebook and map. It’s a very friendly, old-fashioned shop, specialising in local books and local history. But they don't sell English books, so for today I went on past.

​5. Libreria Luxemburg

I saved this bookshop until last because it's probably my favourite of all. Libreria Luxemburg is Turin’s oldest bookshop, established in 1872, famous for its collection of international books - and sure enough, they had a copy of In Other Words. The assistants here are always great to talk to. While I was paying for the book, they discussed Jhumpa Lahiri with me, gave me a few other recommendations, and – when they found out that I was a writer – preordered The House at the Edge of Night. Independent bookshops like these are real jewels for readers and writers, and Libreria Luxemburg is one of the best.

​And as a bonus, here's a sixth book-related place I love in Torino: Biblioteca Civica Centrale

This is Turin's public library. As a writer, I borrow most of the books I read, and when I moved to Turin I wasn't sure how I would find the English-language books I was used to borrowing from my local library in the UK. But I couldn’t believe how many books, in all languages, the Turin public library system has in its stores. Writers rely on libraries even more than bookshops, and I'm lucky to have this one nearby. I visit it most weeks to check out several books. I’d already found a copy of In Other Words, but the staff here are happy to order books, so I expect they’ll have a copy here too before long. For now, I borrowed a few other books and set off for home to start reading In Other Words.

Those are just a few of my favourite places to find books here in Torino. As a city, Turin is most famous for its factories and industrial past, but with so many bookshops, bookstalls and libraries everywhere (and one of Italy's most famous publishing houses, Einaudi), it's definitely also a city of readers...

This morning I was reading about Jhumpa Lahiri's new non-fiction book In Other Words, which is out this week. I've been looking forward to this book for a long time. It's a chronicle of Lahiri's experiences of learning to speak and write in Italian, which began with a trip to Italy in 1994 and ended with her moving her whole family to Rome to be able to learn the language well enough to write in it, a personal challenge Lahiri set herself and finally managed to achieve (her book is written in parallel English and Italian). As someone who is learning Italian too, but mainly through the practical necessities of having a cross-cultural family and now living as an immigrant here, the story of Lahiri's personal drive to learn the language really intrigues me. I'm interested to read about her experiences learning Italian, especially the books she read as part of the process. I've been learning Italian for about seven years now, and I've read plenty of books along the way too, so thought this week I'd share some of my favourites...

Those are the five books that have helped me the most with learning Italian. I'm looking forward to reading Jhumpa Lahiri's book when it comes out on Thursday. And I'd be interested to hear about your own experiences learning a second language - whether English, Italian or another. Let me know in the comments which books helped you the most, and what you love about them...