Lunch in Paris

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard

Nonfiction - Memoir

22010 Little, Brown and Company

Finished on July 22, 2022

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman--and never went home again. Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pave au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce?

Lunch In Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs--one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen), soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate souffle) and develops a crush on her local butcher (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart. Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a story of falling in love, redefining success and discovering what it truly means to be at home. In the delicious tradition of memoirs like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life.

I love a good memoir, especially one that include travel ideas and recipes. Lunch in Paris has been languishing on my Nook for a few years and I just happened to notice it after I made up my list for the Paris in July reading challenge. Having given up on a few books from that list, I decided to give Elizabeth Bard's memoir a go. I was not disappointed, and yet it didn't resonate with me as much as Eloisa James' memoir, Paris in Love, which I read (and loved) in 2012. I shared a half dozen passages (and marked dozens more) from Paris in Love, but didn't find anything notable in Bard's memoir. I enjoyed her story of falling in love with her husband (and France), and will probably go on to read her follow-up books (Picnic in Provence and Dinner Chez Moi), but I'm not chomping at the bit to buy a print edition of Lunch in Paris for my keeper shelf. I am, however, tempted to curl up with Paris in Love, which deserves a second reading.

The Longest Road

 

The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo

Nonfiction - Travel

2013 Picador

Finished on December 1, 2021

Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

In The Longest Road, one of America's most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large.

Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take shape: How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he'd drive from the nation's southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to everyday Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.

So it was that in 2011, in an America more divided than in living memory, Caputo, his wife, and their two English setters made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as "Fred" and "Ethel") from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 16,000 miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today's United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could cause us to pull apart.

Had I read the back cover blurb, I would have know that The Longest Road is less about an RV road trip and more about America and what holds it together (or drives it apart). I'm not sorry I read Caputo's memoir, but I would have enjoyed it more had he shared more details about his actual camping experiences along the way from Florida to Alaska. My favorite parts were in the early chapters when Caputo and his wife were learning all the ins-and-outs about pulling a travel trailer and then later toward the end of the book when they reached the Pacific Northwest and headed into Alaska. The middle section was a slog and I was tempted to quit, but I'm glad I didn't since I'm in the middle of planning a road trip to Alaska and found a couple of tidbits of information to add to my notes.

These passages spoke to my inner nomad:

I had only one hard-and-fast rule: avoid interstates. They are predictable and boring, and their uniformity somehow erases changes in landscape; you can drive six hundred miles, from forests into desert, and feel that you haven’t gone anywhere. In a sense, you haven’t. You have no idea about the lives of the people in the towns and cities you’ve bypassed at seventy miles an hour.

and

The total distance—11,741 miles—gave me sticker shock. Round it up to twelve thousand. Almost halfway around the world! It seemed slightly mad, but then it might do me good. To make such an epic road trip, discovering places I’d never been, rediscovering others, never knowing what I’d find beyond the next curve or hill, would be to recapture the enchantment of youth, a sense of promise and possibility. The cicada chirped incessantly in my head. I clicked back to the first map. Looking at it brought on a mixture of eagerness and reluctance. The buzzing grew more shrill. If you don’t go now, geezer, you never will. I listened to my inner cicada, and the uneasiness subsided. If I’d learned anything, it was that the things you do never cause as much regret as the things you don’t.

I've struggled with this review, trying to figure out why I don't care for this author's narrative voice. Nearly every woman he encounters on his journey is described by her hair color & length, as well as her physique. He also mentions the appearance of men, but with less attention than with the women. There's also a hint of arrogance to his vignettes and this particular passage made me dislike Caputo even more:

Leslie stared in silence, first at Ethel, [the Airstream] then at me. Three marriages and a few relationships in between qualify me to make this observation about Homo sapiens femalis, subspecies Americanus: they are congenitally incapable of apologizing for a mistake because they are incapable of admitting they've made one. It's always the guy's fault. Number two son Marc, married for a decade, has likewise noticed this trait and has revised the old riddle about the falling tree not making a sound: "If a man were all alone in a forest with no woman there, would he still be wrong?"

It's been many years since I've read Neil Peart's memoir, Ghost Rider* (click on the link for my review), but it was much more enjoyable than this book by Philip Caputo.

*Peart's memoir is about his travels (on his BMW "adventure-touring" motorcycle) across Canada & the Yukon, over to Alaska, down the West Coast of the U.S. to Mexico and Belize before heading back to Canada. It's one I keep meaning to re-read.

Blue Highways: A Journey into America

Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon
Nonfiction - Travel/Memoir
2013 Hachette Audio (first published in 1982)
Read by Joe Barrett
Finished on July 20, 2019
Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

Maybe I should stick to reading travel blogs. Apparently, travel essays are not for me; at least not those of Steinbeck's or Heat-Moon's. I have this book in both print and audio and having just finished almost 18 hours of listening time, I know the print edition would not have held my interest. The only reason I continued with the audio is because I really enjoyed listening to the reader. He was spot-on with all the various accents and his "performance" made the story just interesting enough to keep me listening. Meh.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
Classic/Travel Memoir
2002 by Penguin (first published 1962)
Finished on July 23, 2018
Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California’s Monterey Peninsula.

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.

It has been many, many years since I first read Travels with Charley. My memory of that first reading, while vague (and perhaps romanticized), is very positive. A dear friend sent me a copy several years ago and after Rod & I bought our travel trailer, I decided it was time to give the book a second reading. I began reading on July 30, 2017 and didn't finished until July 23rd - almost exactly a year later! Now, to clarify, I only read it while traveling in our RV, so it isn't as if it were a 1,000 page tome! Sadly, the book didn't live up to my expectations. I found it very dated and pedantic, which led to some skimming, which is not my style, but I was eager to finish and move on to something else. I'm sad that I didn't love it as much as I did that first time I read it, but I was looking more for inspiration about future destinations than for his message about mankind. So, with that said, I wonder if I should re-read The Grapes of Wrath, which I read and loved in high school (40 years ago!). I recently read East of Eden (reviewed here) and thought it was exceptionally good, so maybe there's a chance I'll still love The Grapes of Wrath.

Favorite Passages:

When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.

and

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.

and

Under the big oak trees of my place at Sag Harbor sat Rocinante, handsome and self-contained, and neighbors came to visit, some neighbors we didn't even know we had. I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation--a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move. 

and

The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew if first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature. It was very far inland that I caught the first smell of the Pacific. When one has been long at sea, the smell of land reaches far out to greet one. And the same is true when one has been long inland. I believe I smelled the sea rocks and the kelp and the excitement of churning sea water, the sharpness of iodine and the under odor of washed and ground calcareous shells. Such a far-off and remembered odor comes subtly so that one does not consciously smell it, but rather an electric excitement is released--a kind of boisterous joy. I found myself plunging over the roads of Washington, as dedicated to the sea as any migrating lemming.

"Rocinante"

Steinbeck's Truck & Camper

Steinbeck's Route

"Sweetpea"

Our first RV

In Search of Inspiration

Keeping the Feast

Keeping the Feast: One Couple's Story of Love, Food and Healing in Italy by Paula Butturini
Nonfiction - Memoir
2010 Riverhead Books
Finished on July 28, 2016
Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

Paula Butturini and John Tagliabue met as foreign correspondents in Italy, fell in love, and four years later, married in Rome. But not even a month after the wedding, tragedy struck. They had transferred away from their Italian paradise when John was shot and nearly killed on the job. The period of physical and mental suffering that followed marked the abrupt end of what they'd known together and the beginning of a phase of life neither had planned for.

They followed their instincts and returned to the place they loved, Italy, and there they found a lifeline of sorts. As John struggled to regain his health and Paula reexamined her assumptions about illness and recovery, it was food and its rituals--the daily shopping, preparing, sharing, and memory of food--that kept them moving forward. Food became a symbol of the family's innate desire to survive, to accept, and to celebrate what fell its way.

Keeping the Feast is an inspiring story of what happens when tragedy strikes a previously happy marriage and a couple must fight to find its bearings. It is a testament to the extraordinary sustaining powers of food and love, to the healing that can come from the simple rituals of life, even during life's biggest challenges, and to the stubborn belief that there is always an afterward, always hope.

My dear friend Meredith sent me this book waaaay back in 2010. I was so excited to read it, but as we all know, reading is driven by moods and for whatever reason, this book didn't call out to me as quickly as I thought it would. It languished in the bookcase until I finally decided the time was right. It was summertime and I was eager for some armchair travel, so I dove in and was quickly transported to Italy.

We moved into a small apartment near the Tiber on one of those golden October days so perfect that you could never imagine willingly leaving the city again. Every morning I would walk down our narrow street toward the hubbub of Campo dei Fiori, where the flower sellers, the fruit vendors, the vegetable sellers, the fishmongers, the mushroom lady, the bread shop, the lamb and chicken lady, the pork butcher, the notions man, the meat vans, the olive and herbs vendors, the newspaper kiosk, the housewares stand, and the roving garlic salesmen from Bangladesh were always open for business no matter how early I awakened.

Morning after morning for an entire year, I walked to the Campo before most people were up. Noisy, honking, shouting Rome is almost quiet at that hour, and what began as a simple routine soon took on the trappings of ritual. I woke up early, dressed, walked out the door and over to the Campo. I would buy a shiny, plump purple-black eggplant. Or a handful of slender green beans, or fresh and young you could eat them raw. I brought three golden pear, or a heavy bunch of fat, green grapes. I bought a few slices of Milanese salami, a bit of veal. I bought a thin slab of creamy gorgonzola, to spread on crusty, still-warm bread. I bought milk, yogurt, butter, and eggs, and finally the newspapers. Then I would head home, stopping in the tiny church of Santa Brigida, which lay halfway between the Campo and our apartment. The first few months, I would rest my bundles on the cold marble floor, kneel for a moment at the back of the church under the gaze of a painted Madonna, and try not to cry. Months later, I would still kneel for a moment in the same spot, but when I felt the tears coming, I'd make a fist and pound once or twice on the pew in front of me. It made a fitting, hollow sound in the almost empty church. Then I would collect my bundles and continue my short walk home.

I needed both parts of the ritual, the buying of the food and the stopping in the church. We all must eat, and there is nothing more normal than buying the food that keeps us alive. When I performed the ritual of buying our daily bread, the world seemed more normal. Pounding a pew a few minutes later brought home how far from normal I still felt.

Buttarini's memoir isn't just about food and living in Italy. It's about a terrible act of violence. I found myself nodding in agreement.

Years later, I still have difficulty even connecting them to a shooting. Shootings, I still like to think, happen to drug dealers or innocent passerby in New York, to foreign tourists visiting Miami. They happen to people who clean guns or keep them under their beds. They happen to soldiers, to policemen, to mafiosi, to people who have enemies. They don't happen to my husband, my family, to me. I suspect my response of utter disbelief is standard for anyone who hasn't been blindsided by some sort of shock: the sudden diagnosis of a rampaging cancer, the overnight loss of a family's life savings. Shocks like these hammer the notion that a history of good luck is no amulet for the future.

But she does write some mouth-watering passages about food that had me reaching for my Post-It notes and longing to move to Italy!

John and I quickly fell into a routine of meeting Joseph on the terrace that overlooked the lake to eat our meals together. We started around eight, with thick slices of crusty country bread, with butter and jams from the garden's fruit trees, perhaps a bit of cheese or yogurt with honey from the hives that stood below the house, and mugs of strong, milky tea. After working in the garden or doing other small chores, we met again for "elevenses," milky coffee and a couple of simple, store-bought cookies, so we could keep our hunger at bay till the main midday meal about one p.m. I happily took on the cooking: a simple pasta or risotto to start; then a bit of sauteed veal or chicken and a vegetable from the garden; a green salad tossed with olive oil, lemon, and sugar--as Joseph liked it--then fruit, followed by the inevitable siesta.

Final Thoughts:

I love a good foodie memoir, but about halfway into this book, I began to lose interest. Hating to give up on a book that so many of my friends raved about, I pushed on, hoping to finish with at least a 3-star rating. I enjoyed the descriptions of the food and meals shared with family and friends, but Keeping the Feast is such a bleak story. The author was beaten, her husband shot, her mother suffered from depression and then her husband dealt with the same, and on and on it goes. I decided to take a break for about a month, but after that I didn't have any desire to finish the book. So much for a 3-star rating.

Heads in Beds

Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality by Jacob Tomsky
Nonfiction – Travel
2012 Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Read by the author
Finished on March 12, 2015
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)


Publisher’s Blurb:

In the tradition of Kitchen Confidential and Waiter Rant, a rollicking, eye-opening, fantastically indiscreet memoir of a life spent (and misspent) in the hotel industry.

Jacob Tomsky never intended to go into the hotel business. As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of career direction, he became a valet parker for a large luxury hotel in New Orleans. Yet, rising fast through the ranks, he ended up working in "hospitality" for more than a decade, doing everything from supervising the housekeeping department to manning the front desk at an upscale Manhattan hotel... In Heads in Beds he pulls back the curtain to expose the crazy and compelling reality of a multi-billion-dollar industry we think we know.

Heads in Beds is a funny, authentic, and irreverent chronicle of the highs and lows of hotel life, told by a keenly observant insider who's seen it all. Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on in the valet parking garage, the housekeeping department's dirty little secrets—not to mention the shameless activities of the guests, who are rarely on their best behavior. Prepare to be moved, too, by his candor about what it's like to toil in a highly demanding service industry at the luxury level, where people expect to get what they pay for (and often a whole lot more). Employees are poorly paid and frequently abused by coworkers and guests alike, and maintaining a semblance of sanity is a daily challenge.

Along his journey Tomsky also reveals the secrets of the industry, offering easy ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle. This book (and a timely proffered twenty-dollar bill) will help you score late checkouts and upgrades, get free stuff galore, and make that pay-per-view charge magically disappear. Thanks to him you'll know how to get the very best service from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds. Or, at the very least, you will keep the bellmen from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and bashing it against the wall repeatedly.

I’ve worked in hotels for more than a decade. I’ve checked you in, checked you out, oriented you to the property, served you a beverage, separated your white panties from the white bedsheets, parked your car, tasted your room service (before and, sadly, after), cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&M’s out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. I have been on the front lines, and by that I mean the front desk, of upscale hotels for years, and I’ve seen it all firsthand.

And so begins Jacob Tomsky’s humorous and, at times, irreverent memoir, Heads in Beds.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Tomsky narrate his tell-all book about the hotel industry, and I’ve made a mental note of some of his secrets for making my next hotel stay more enjoyable. My husband and I rarely stay in 5-star luxury hotels, opting for the predictability and comfort of the Hilton chain, specifically Hampton Inn. We have, however, both stayed in some very posh hotels over the years and one of my all-time favorites is The Peninsula in New York City. My daughter and I spent a full week there in 1996 and we were treated extremely well, thanks to a friend who was good friends with one of the sales associates. It definitely paid to know someone behind the front desk!

Tomsky’s book is highly entertaining and the appendices (Things a Guest Should Never Do) share some customer tips that are not exclusive to the hotel industry. I found myself nodding my head in agreement, recognizing similar situations as an employee of a major bookstore.

Do not snap the credit card down on my desk.

You know this one, where you press the card down with your thumb and use your index finger to bend the front corner of the card up and then release it so it snaps authoritatively and loudly on my desk? You just made me hate you!

and

Do not continue your phone conversation during the entire check-in.

Can you imagine how it feels, as a human, to be part of someone else’s effort to multitask? While you say to the phone, “uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, well, I told her they wouldn’t go for it. I know these people,” I get the lift of an eyebrow, side-glances, brief and uninterested head nods thrown in my direction indicating your main focus remains on your call, perhaps a moment where you held the phone slightly away from your ear to benevolently allow me 5 percent of your attention. That call will end in five minutes. But because you treated me like an automatic check-in machine, this room I’m giving you will plague your whole stay. And also I key bombed you.

and 

“My credit card declined? That’s impossible. Run it again.”

Man, don’t make me run it again. If your CC declines once, it will, without question, decline again. Your card is not a crumpled old dollar, and the banking system is not a stubborn vending machine. That’s not how the banking system works. You need to call your bank.

And, no, you can’t use my phone.

 and

“They told me I should ask for an upgrade.”

Who the f*** is they? Oh, they. Well, they told me to remind you to tip the doorman.

Final Thoughts:

This is a great audiobook! I listened to it over the course of three days, often times bursting out laughing, other times fumbling for a pen & paper in order to take notes. However, like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, this audiobook is not for young ears or for those who are easily offended. Tomsky is a bit crass at times and drops more F-bombs than the saltiest of sailors.

Paris Letters

Paris Letters by Janice MacLeod
Memoir
2014 Sourcebooks
Finished on September 2, 2014
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)





Publisher’s Blurb:

Finding love and freedom in a pen, a paintbrush… and Paris

How much money does it take to quit your job?

Exhausted and on the verge of burnout, Janice poses this question to herself as she doodles on a notepad at her desk. Surprisingly, the answer isn’t as daunting as she expected. With a little math and a lot of determination, Janice cuts back, saves up, and buys herself two years of freedom in Europe.

A few days into her stop in Paris, Janice meets Christophe, the cute butcher down the street—who doesn’t speak English. Through a combination of sign language and franglais, they embark on a whirlwind Paris romance. She soon realizes that she can never return to the world of twelve-hour workdays and greasy corporate lingo. But her dwindling savings force her to find a way to fund her dreams again. So Janice turns to her three loves—words, art, and Christophe—to figure out a way to make her happily-ever-after in Paris last forever.

Another selection for the 2014 Paris in July reading challenge, this one turned out to be a winner! I managed to read the entire book in just one week, which these days is a huge accomplishment for me. Littered with two dozen Post-It Notes, this book is one I plan to hang on to for future reference, right next to Eloisa James’ Paris in Love. I don’t know when, but I’m definitely planning to visit Paris… someday!

Inspiration to De-Clutter:

By night, I moved on from my closets to delve into my cupboards. I tossed dried-up nail polishes and hairbrushes. I only used one hairbrush. Why did I have six? I used up the rest of my teeth whitening gel. I gave up on and tossed the recipes I’d clipped for dishes I never made. I tossed the free CD of weird music I never listen to from that yoga class I stopped going to. The old yoga mat, the deflated yoga ball, the broken yoga straps, the expired yoga membership…tossed. Half-filled journals of half-baked ideas, the stack of phone books from the last five years [who uses phones books anymore?!], broken flowerpots that I kept with thoughts of making something crafty from them, the broken frames I meant to fix…tossed. Makeup samples, swag from film industry party gift bags, sunglasses with scratches [eh-hem], a home phone even though I didn’t have a land line anymore, chargers for cell phones I didn’t have anymore, computer boxes for computers I didn’t have either, instruction manuals for electronics that I didn’t even remember having, the wrong-sized vacuum bags I never returned, checkbooks for accounts I no longer had…tossed. And loyalty cards that promised savings on everything I bought. Tossed. I’d save more by not buying.

This brought a smile to my face:

By June, the sixth month into my journaling year, I had crossed plenty off my list of unfinished business and let go of many items, such as most of my books and one of my guitars. I was ruthless. I knew, without knowing where I was going, that I wouldn’t need this stuff when I got there.

But one item stopped me in my tracks.

My Kris Kristofferson album.

I haven’t owned a record player since my single-digit years, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of this album. This record was pilfered from my parents’ collection. When I was a kid, I would gawk at this album cover and stare into his steely blue eyes. Kris Kristofferson was a real artist. A great lyricist and a pretty good actor. When I looked at Kris, I thought, “This guy is so good at everything he does. And what he does is so cool. I want to do something cool.” I kept the album.

On the magic of bookstores:

My haste to get outside is based on an exciting call I received after lunch. The book I ordered has arrived at the local English bookstore. There is something poetic about a good old-fashioned bookstore. I used to have Amazon deliver books to my door. I’ve always had a love for mail. And these days, I’ll be the first to brag about the convenience and pleasure of e-books. The instant access to English books in a French-speaking land is a magical delight. But there is magic in traditional bookstores too. It’s a magic you can feel in the air. The smell of aging paper, of ink, and of people. And in Paris, some of those people were Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

Final Thoughts:

This delightful memoir, with its black-and-white drawings and countless travel suggestions, is the perfect armchair guide to "La Ville-Lumière.” Not only do I plan to peruse it again at a later date, I’ve also just discovered the author’s blog, which I know will keep me entertained for many, many months. Paris Letters is all that Eat Pray Love hoped to be, but without the prayer and the navel-gazing.

We'll Always Have Paris

We’ll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir by Jennifer Coburn
Nonfiction/Travel Memoir
2014 Sourcebooks, Inc.
Finished on August 13, 2014
Rating: 3/5 (Good)



Publisher’s Blurb:

How her daughter and her passport taught Jennifer to live like there’s no tomorrow.

Jennifer Coburn has always been terrified of dying young. So she decides to save up and drop everything to travel with her daughter, Katie, on a whirlwind European adventure before it’s too late. Even though her husband can’t join them, even though she’s nervous about the journey, and even though she’s perfectly healthy, Jennifer is determined to jam her daughter’s mental photo album with memories—just in case.

From the cafés of Paris to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Jennifer and Katie take on Europe one city at a time, united by their desire to see the world and spend precious time together. In this heartwarming generational love story, Jennifer reveals how their adventures helped vanquish her fear of dying… for the sake of living.

When my daughter was 10, I took her to London for two weeks while my husband stayed home and slaved over a hot computer (his choice, mind you). I’ll never forget one of my girlfriends remarking on how brave I was to travel overseas by myself with a fairly young child. It never occurred to me to be afraid. And, it wasn’t as if I was going to be completely alone. At the time, one of my best friends was living in London and not only did she and her son join us on several excursions in and around London, but she also supplied me with all the pertinent information I needed in order to travel by bus and train to see Stonehenge, Bath, Salisbury, Windsor and Hampton Court Palace when she wasn’t able to accompany us. We did just fine and it was truly a lovely and memorable holiday.

(Squinting in the hot sun!)

Two years later, after receiving a small inheritance from my grandmother (who adored traveling just as much as I do), I asked Amy to pick another destination for a Mother-Daughter adventure. We had already gone skiing in Breckenridge and spent a long (albeit chilly!) weekend shopping, playing tennis and lounging by the pool at the Hyatt Regency in in Scottsdale, so I was curious to see what she would pick for our next getaway. A fashionista in the making, she chose New York City! And again, a friend exclaimed that I was “so brave!” to travel to the Big Apple without my husband, let alone with my 12-year-old daughter. I wasn’t worried. I have a great sense of direction (as does Amy), our destination didn’t require learning a new language, and we didn’t have to worry about looking the opposite direction while crossing the street. How dangerous could it be? It turned out to be another wonderful vacation filled with 10 days of sightseeing, museums, shopping, Broadway shows, fine dining, long walks (from the Guggenheim Museum down to Battery Park), and pampering in a beautiful hotel. We both had a blast!

So when I came across Coburn’s memoir in the travel section at Barnes & Noble, I was immediately drawn to the colorful cover art (as well as the subtitle), and decided it was not only the perfect choice for the Paris in July reading challenge, but one which would also appeal to my insatiable wanderlust. Amy spent some time in Paris while studying Fashion Merchandising at TCU, but I have never been. Last year, I devoured Paris in Love by Eloisa James and was looking forward to another book filled with travel anecdotes, as well as one that could provide me with specific recommendations for restaurants and hotel accommodations. While not terrible, We’ll Always Have Paris was nowhere near as good as Eloisa James’ memoir and I wound up with far less than half the Post-It Notes marking pages of beautiful passages or travel information for future reference. While both writers delve into their personal histories, sharing their thoughts on death and struggles with grief, James’ writing is tender and lyrical with a fine balance of humor thrown in, while Coburn’s is flat and, at times, whiney. I was surprised, the further I read, that Coburn’s book not only includes her trip to Paris and London in 2005, but also Italy in 2008, Spain in 2011, and Amsterdam and Paris in 2013. This, along with alternating narratives about her parents and her childhood may have been a bit ambitious for one book; the travel segments are glossed over and the transitions between narratives are anything but smooth.

Final Thoughts:

A fairly quick read, but not worth owning. If you must, get it from your local library. Or better yet, get a copy of Paris in Love by Eloisa James. That one’s a winner!

Paris in Love

Paris in Love by Eloisa James
Nonfiction – Memoir
2012 Random House
Finished on 8/4/12
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)
Paris in July Challenge #2




 
This morning the snow was coming down fast in rue du Conservatoire, slanting sideways and turning the gray slate roofs the color of milk. I leaned against my study window, idly thinking about how passionately children love snow, when I realized that I was peering down at a group of Parisian women in the street below, engaged in the rapid-fire kissing of a wintry hello. Growing up on the farm, we’d braved snowstorms in puffy coats; these women wore dark coats belted tightly around their slim waists. As they bent toward each other, pecking like manic sparrows, their scarves flashed magenta, lavender, dull gold. From my vantage point, far above them, they looked like inhabitants of a different world.

Publisher’s Blurb:

In 2009, New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James took a leap that many people dream about: she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor, and moved her family to Paris. Paris in Love: A Memoir chronicles her joyful year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

With no classes to teach, no committee meetings to attend, no lawn to mow or cars to park, Eloisa revels in the ordinary pleasures of life—discovering corner museums that tourist overlook, chronicling Frenchwomen’s sartorial triumphs, walking from one end of Paris to another. She copes with her Italian husband’s notions of quality time; her two hilarious children, ages eleven and fifteen, as they navigate schools—not to mention puberty—in a foreign language; and her mother-in-law Marina’s raised eyebrow in the kitchen (even as Marina overfeeds Milo, the family dog).

Paris in Love invites the reader into the life of a most enchanting family, framed by la ville de l’amour.

 
Paris in Love is a charming, honest read filled with both touching vignettes (her chapter on grief and Kate Braestrup’s memoir, Here If You Need Me*, tugged at my heartstrings) and laugh-out-loud tales of life in Paris. I love the way this book is organized. Some anecdotes are shared in two- or three-page “chapters” and others are a single paragraph. This is perfect for those like me who can barely keep their eyes open for more than 15 minutes while reading in bed. I would love to include each and every passage I marked with (24!!) Post-It flags, but that would spoil the fun of discovering your own favorites. Here are just a few:

Parlez-Vous Francais?

I walk through the streets and enjoy listening to wild chatter in French with the same level of understanding that one has hearing a row of sparrows crowded on a telephone line. Are these people really talking, or are they just singing to each other? They look far too elegant and sophisticated to be uttering the half-assed things people say to each other in New York.

On Books:

Anna spent last evening rearranging her room. She’s divided her shelves into “books with girls in them,” “books in which bad stuff happens” (mostly fairy tales), and “books for every day” (Junie B. and Enid Blyton). I took a look at my bookshelves. I have “books with happy endings” and “books telling me how to be happy.”

and

Anna had a tough time at school today with Beatrice’s gang of mean girls, who took possession of the mats during gymnastics class and demanded a password (which, of course, they wouldn’t share). On the way home, we talked about friends and how complicated they are, and then on the Metro Anna grinned and said, “I have a friend,” holding up the fifth Harry Potter book. I remember those days very well. I had friends too: Anne of Green Gables, Dorothy Gale and Toto, Nancy Drew.

And then, of course, there’s the food. Oh, the food! Like Julia Child in Julie & Julia, Eloisa loves her French food.

Between six thirty and seven o’clock in the evening, every other person on the street swings a long baguette partially wrapped in white paper. Suddenly, the world is full of crusty bread.

and

We discovered yesterday that our beloved covered market, not to mention the local fishmonger and butcher, is closed on Monday, which left our cupboard bare. For lunch I had a hunk of an excellent Camembert, with a boiled potato sprinkled with coarse sea salt, followed by a leftover apricot tart. Life is good.

and

There is a bakery down the street from Anna’s school, on avenue de Villars, where there is always a line. They specialize in little fruit tarts. The most beautiful one has figs sliced so thin as to be translucent, then dusted in sugar. Luca’s favorite looks like a tiny version of the Alps: small strawberries, each one sitting upright and capped in a drop of white chocolate. My personal favorite has sliced apricots arranged in overlapping patterns, like crop circles in an English field.

On poetry:

When I went to college I stopped memorizing poetry, thinking that I would pick it up when I had more time. But as I lay in the dark thinking about how soup foamed into soap, it occurred to me that I may not have world enough and time to memorize the rest of even a very small canon. My grandmother was diagnosed with dementia, and was silent the last decade of her life; my father, my darling father [Robert Bly] of a thousand poems and more, has taken to watching leaves fall from their trees. Rather than knit those leaves into words, he simply allows them to fall. It’s a cruel fate: to watch without recounting the fall of the leaf; to grieve without creating anew; to age without describing it.

In the last year, as I’ve watched him struggle with the way age is stealing his words, it occurred to me that I should memorize some more poetry, as ballast against my possible inheritance of that good, wordless night. Here, in its entirety, is the poem with which I resumed my memorization: W. H. Auden’s “Their Lonely Betters.”

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying.
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.


I enjoyed Eloisa’s writing so much that I decided to check out some of her romance novels, but after a few cursory glances, I decided to pass and await her next memoir. I do hope there’s another. Or maybe a novel. I’m not really into the bodice-ripper type stories.

Final Thoughts: I’ve never been to Paris, or anywhere in France, for that matter. Ms. James’ memoir has me longing to visit (maybe even more so than Italy) and I think it would be a great reference guide for my first trip to Paris--hopefully, before I turn 55!

And, a comment from my husband: 

Boy, she's a very good writer! "It’s a cruel fate: to watch without recounting the fall of the leaf; to grieve without creating anew; to age without describing it."

Yep. I'd have to agree!




Go here to read more about Eloisa James (Mary Bly). Her website can be found here.

*Click here to read my review for Braestrup's memoir.

Tout Sweet

 

Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in France by Karen Wheeler

Nonfiction - Memoir

2011 Sourcebooks, Inc.

Finished on 7/15/12

Rating: 3/5 (So-so)

Paris in July Challenge 2012

My new home has no indoor loo, no bathtub, no kitchen sink and no hot water. It has flowery brown wallpaper in almost every room, damp climbing up the crumbly walls and a gaping hole looking down into a dank cellar instead of a kitchen floor. Then there’s the pile of rubbish the size of the Pyrenees in the rear courtyard. I don’t even have the clothes for this kind of life. After a decade and a half of working in fashion, most of my wardrobe is designed for going to cocktail parties—or, at the very least, breakfast at Claridges—and my shoes are so high that I need a Sherpa and an oxygen tank to wear them.

Publisher’s Blurb:

Thirtysomething fashion editor Karen has it all: a handsome boyfriend, a fabulous flat in west London, and an array of gorgeous shoes. But when her boyfriend leaves, she makes an unexpected decision: to hang up her Manolos and wave good-bye to her glamorous city lifestyle to go it alone in a run-down house in rural Poitou-Charentes, central western France.

Acquiring a host of new friends and unsuitable suitors, she learns that true happiness might be found in the simplest of things—a bike ride through the countryside on a summer evening, or a glass of wine or three in her neighbor’s courtyard.

Tout Sweet is the perfect read for anyone who dreams of chucking away their BlackBerry in favor of real blackberrying and downshifting to a romantic, alluring locale where new friendships, and new loves, are just some of the treasures to be found amongst life’s simple pleasures.

For me, a book full of Post-It flags is typically the sign of a great read. Unfortunately, this was not the case with Tout Sweet. My dear friend Bellezza sent me this book many months ago and it wasn’t until the Paris in July challenge began that I felt compelled to pick it up. I read it in bits and pieces over the course of two weeks and enjoyed it well enough, but it’s not one that I’m singing praises of. There was just something missing that kept it from becoming a hit.

As mentioned, I found several passages worth noting, in spite of my lackluster reaction to this memoir.

On le “colourful” style Français:

And now, here I am, just over a year since I signed the acte final, standing outside Maison Coquelicot, feeling panicked by what I have taken on. I have a feeling that she—for I have decided that the house is definitely feminine—is going to be quite a handful. It doesn’t help that what I know about DIY could be written on the back of a button and that my practical skills start and end at unscrewing lipsticks and spraying scent onto tester strips.

I stand in the fierce afternoon sun of the Poitou-Charentes and try to visualize the façade re-rendered with lime plaster and painted creamy white, the dull brown shutters transformed with a coat of pale blue-grey, and hot pink geraniums in terracotta pots lined up on the windowsills. My mission, I remind myself, is to restore this unloved little house to a thing of beauty—to turn Maison Coquelicot into the quintessence of le style Francais. I will give this sad little house back its soul and, in the process, I will learn to lead a simpler, less superficial and more connected life (and stop buying so many pairs of shoes).

In contrast to the fashionably minimal décor of my old flat in London, I plan to fill Maison Coquelicot with colour and rustic comforts. The petit salon will be decorated with chintz curtains, colourful rugs and fat sofas piled high with faded floral cushions. The kitchen will have open shelving crammed with storage jars, colourful old china and wooden bowls filled with plump aubergines, lemons and bell peppers. And in the bedrooms I will have cream-coloured iron beds covered with linen sheets and flowery patterned eiderdowns, while the dressing table will overflow with antique perfume bottles and bath oils.

I will fill the small courtyard with scented roses, orange-pink geraniums, climbing jasmine and herbs growing in terracotta pots as well as beaten-up wicker chairs and an antique wrought iron table. I will string a row of twinkling fairy lights along the stone walks, watering can in one hand and a glass of ice-cold rose in the other. Maison Coquelicot will burst with colour and pattern and pieces of furniture that look like they have been there forever. There will be stacks of colourful books at every turn, jugs of sweet peas, roses and peonies placed on every surface and candles and antique mirrors in every room. And, most importantly of all, there will be a roaring fire (and willow baskets overflowing with logs) in the petit salon, so that in the evening the house will glow with warmth.

Hmmm, apparently Karen needs to find another word for “colorful.”

On French food markets:

There is a food market taking place in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral and, unlike the few stalls that pass for a market in Villiers, this appears to be the real French deal. People are bustling around with baskets or pull-along shopping trolleys, squeezing, sniffing or sampling the goods. Many stalls sell just one product—goat’s cheese, artichokes or exotic looking breads[…]

The produce itself looks very alluring: purple-green cabbages sprouting like big flower brooches, small black prunes glistening like jet beads, heads of purple and white garlic strung together like a necklace. There are aubergines, the same opulent shade of purple-black as a YSL smoking, piles of large mushrooms, their undersides pleated like a Vionnet gown, and stalls selling pungent frills of parsley and basil or velvety green leaves of sage, while plump and shiny red and green peppers nestle in wooden boxes. Unfortunately, none of this is much use to me as I am weeks, if not months, away from a functioning kitchen and mostly living on bread and Brie.

On walking in the French countryside:

And so, on Sunday afternoon on the first day of spring, I put on my trainers and start to walk. I tell myself that I will just walk to the next village of St. Maurice, which is about half a mile away. I walk downhill from Villiers towards the old village with its hotchpotch of old houses with mismatched terracotta-tiled roofs, the peeling paint of the blue-grey shutters visible in the spring sunshine and an explosion of orange-pink geraniums on doorsteps and windowsills. The smell of woodsmoke and damp earth has been replaced by a fresh greenness—notes of green shoots and sap combined with a hint of white florals, most noticeably jasmine. Crossing the little stone bridge, I arrive at the twelfth-century church which has lain on my doorstep, unexplored, for a full seven months.

Ah. The ubiquitous blue-grey shutters and orange-pink geraniums. ;)

On life’s simple pleasures:

I find pleasure in the simple, daily rituals of French life: waking up to the peal of church bells and birds singing above the high stone walls; throwing open the shutters first thing to the sight of sunshine and geraniums; walking up to the bakery on the square to buy freshly baked croissants. And then, after a day working at my computer, the early evening ritual of watering the roses and the potted herbs—basil, sage, chives and rosemary—in the courtyard signifies that it’s time to relax. My favourite ritual of all, however, is hanging out the washing. Having lived in a top-floor flat with no outside space for most of my last ten years in London, being able to peg my clothes on a washing line and watch as they sway seductively in a subtle breeze is a real luxury. There is no bottled scent as lovely as that of just-washed cotton sheets hung out to dry in the sun. Finally, I have found pleasures that do not involve a credit card.

In addition to the repetitive nature of Wheeler’s descriptions, I have another quibble about the author’s style. On many occasions, she will have one individual speaking a line or two of dialogue and within the same paragraph, another person will reply. Here is just one example:

It turned out that Dave had also invited an English friend, Miranda, to dinner. “I think you’ll like her,” he said. “She’s been living out here for about ten years and she’s hilarious.”

“How do you know her?” I asked. “She’s helped me out a lot with translation. I met her in the estate agent’s office when she was doing some translating for Victor.”

Those last two lines in red are spoken by Dave, not Karen. It became very confusing trying to sort of who was saying what. This may be isolated to the ARC, but I don’t have a copy of the finished product available to compare the text. I certainly hope that this was all sorted out before the final press run.

Speaking of Dave, I did not care for him (or his obnoxious son) one bit! I didn’t trust him and felt he was using Karen. He conveniently forgot his wallet on more than one occasion, forcing Karen to loan him quite a bit of money, which he never seemed to think was a big deal. It was a very strange friendship and I was never quite sure where it was heading.

I also thought it a bit odd to end the final paragraph of this book with the following:

…And as I turn into the square in Villiers, my heart beats just a little faster at the thought of my new neighbour, who is heading home with my telephone number—so casually asked for—in his pocket. Have you enjoyed this book?

Final Thoughts: In spite of its flaws, Tout Sweet is a mildly entertaining travel memoir. Bellezza and Andi both loved the book, so please read their reviews (here and here) before deciding against it simply because of my ho-hum review.

You may read more about Wheeler’s life in France here.