A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Last week the BF and I did a Paris-themed date night from the claustrophobic comfort of our condo. I made a playlist with Edith Piaf, cracked a bottle of wine and put a Youtube tour of the Louvre on in the background. I also started reading A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s memoir of his Paris years in the 20’s- I’d been saving it for my next physical trip to the City of Lights, but as that trip might be years out, I thought I’d indulge in […]
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugan
I’ve been wanting to read Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugan’s Giller prize-winning, Booker prize-shortlisted novel, ever since it came out in 2011- its only taken a “Music” bingo square to finally get me there. Half-Blood Blues is a beautifully written, deeply layered, and historically fascinating novel about a group of mixed-race jazz musicians in Paris and Berlin during the wild interwar years. The novel opens in Paris in 1941, when one of the band members gets ‘pinched’ by the occupying Nazis. From this navel, the […]
Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan
Real book lovers love to read books about bookstores. Make it a bookstore in Paris and that is even better! I have read several bookstore in Paris books. They usually follow a similar plot – confused woman somehow ends up owning a bookstore in Paris and her life changes – typically because of a wild romance with a wonderful Frenchman. Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan may be about a bookstore in Paris, but the plot is unique. Leah has lost her husband. That […]
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
I am a sucker for books and Paris, and books about Paris, so I had high expectations for this book. Jean Perdu is the lovelorn owner/operator of the Literary Apothecary, a floating book barge on the Seine from which he prescribes books to heal his customers. Perdu has been avoiding reading the ‘Dear John/Jean’ letter that his last lover, Manon, sent him when she left 20 years ago. When he does finally open Manon’s letter, he discovers that she had been trying to say a […]
The Collector's Apprentice by B.A. Shapiro
I have to say, I was rather disappointed with this one. I really enjoyed Shapiro’s novel The Art Forger – it wasn’t perfect, but it had me hooked, and it was entertaining, and I wanted to see what would happen. While The Muralist wasn’t as gripping, I also enjoyed it – of course, a historical fiction novel isn’t going to be quite as much of a page turner as a heist thriller. In this novel, Shapiro tries to merge the two, and it makes for […]
A Paris All Your Own by Eleanor Brown
Of all the cities in the world to visit, none is as pressure-filled as Paris (from my vantage point, at least). I’m heading there for a weekend and it’s been a decade since I last went so I picked up this collection of essays, promising “Bestselling Women Writers on the City of Light.” I love the concept of this and I have the NYC-equivalents on my TR list (Goodbye to All That & Can’t Say Goodbye). I didn’t necessarily expect a useful travelogue but I […]
