Liguria has fewer dedicated travel books than Tuscany or Rome, but the broader literature on Italian village life and food travel transfers well.
Italian Neighbours by Tim Parks is the most useful of its kind — Parks bought a house in a small Veneto village in the 1980s and writes about Italian rural life with patience, humour, and no illusions. The observations about village rhythms, local loyalties, and the gap between tourist Italy and lived Italy apply equally to a place like Garlenda.
The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones is a sharper, more unsettled account of living in Italy. Jones arrived in Parma in the late 1990s and found a country defined by its complications — the justice system, the media, the north-south divide, the deep regionalism. A useful corrective to the sunlight-and-pasta version.
Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray is a remarkable book about cooking and foraging through Apulia, Catalonia, Naxos, and Carrara (the last of which is in Liguria). Gray lived for years in rural southern Italy and writes about food, marble-cutting communities, and wild plants with unusual authority. It is not a guidebook but it captures the texture of Italian rural life better than most.
The Ligurian Kitchen by Laura Gilly is a regional food guide covering the cooking of the riviera coast and the hinterland — pesto, focaccia, farinata, fish, and the olive oil that defines the cuisine. Good preparation for eating anywhere along this stretch of coast.