Where is your nonfiction section please.
Is it ungodly hot where you are, like it's been in New York City these last weeks? Then let's go freeze our asses off in Tibet with French author Sylvain Tesson. One of my favorite authors (especially in translation), Tesson's latest book, 2019's award-winning La panthère des neiges, is published in English next week as... Continue Reading →
My Place at the Table: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris, by Alexander Lobrano It feels like it’s been way too long since I read a good foodoir, and especially one about France. They can be so pretentious for some reason. My Place at the Table, on the other hand, is such a... Continue Reading →
Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature, by Viv Groskop This, then, is a book about the intersection between Frenchness and happiness through reading, as that is a place I have always found great comfort. My hope is to demonstrate, through the French writers I first discovered in my teens and twenties, how... Continue Reading →
Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, by Curzio Malaparte (Amazon / Book Depository) Italian war correspondent and author Curzio Malaparte is such an oddball figure. I really enjoyed his book Kaputt, about his experiences as a war correspondent in Eastern Europe during the Second World War, but I remember being unsure what was fiction and... Continue Reading →
Book review: A Bookshop in Berlin, by Francoise Frenkel (Amazon / Book Depository) Francoise Frenkel, born Frymeta Frenkel, was a Polish Jew who opened Berlin's first French-language bookstore in 1921. She fled Berlin after the infamous Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, that targeted Jewish shops and institutions, abandoning the beloved shop she'd had to... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Seine, by Elaine Sciolino (Amazon / Book Depository) I overcame anxiety and loneliness and moved forward in my life, like the Seine in its course. The river allowed me to begin a journey of discovery—of Paris, of the French people, of myself. Its energy pumped deep into my veins; its light gave... Continue Reading →
Book review: Berezina, by Sylvain Tesson (Amazon / Book Depository) It's during a previous journey that the idea of a future one comes to mind. Imagination carries the traveler far from the trap where he's gotten stuck. While in the Negev desert, he'll dream of a Scottish glen; in a monsoon, of the Hoggar Mountains;... Continue Reading →
Book review: A Paris Year, by Janice MacLeod (Amazon / Book Depository) Bonjour Bonjour Ça va Ça va Ça va Ça va Bonjour Bonjour. It’s really that easy to have an entire conversation in French. There is no waving hello. This is not the French way. When you wave hello their eyes follow your hand... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Adversary, by Emmanuel Carrere Book Depository It should have been warm and cozy, that family life. They thought it was warm and cozy. But he knew that it was rotten at the core, that not one moment, not one gesture, not even their slumbers had escaped this rot that had grown within him,... Continue Reading →
Book review: Les Parisiennes, by Anne Sebba (Amazon / Book Depository) Anne Sebba writes in her extensive history of the lives of Parisian women during WWII that it's our task to understand, not to judge. And the women whose lives are covered range across such a broad spectrum, from those with selfless motives and actions... Continue Reading →
Book review: One Day in France, by Jean-Marie Borzeix (Amazon / Book Depository) A history written in rich, lovely language (even in translation!) about the author's interest in digging up information about the tragic events that took place on a single day in a French village, when German soldiers murdered several (likely) Resistance members and probably... Continue Reading →
Book review: Every Frenchman Has One, by Olivia deHavilland (Amazon / Book Depository) A quick, fun and light collection of anecdotes with lots of vintage charm by the actress I knew best as Melanie from Gone with the Wind, but of course she's legendary for way more than that. I had no idea she was... Continue Reading →
