Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France by Vivian Swift
Le Road Trip tells the story of one idyllic French honeymoon trip, but it is also a witty handbook of tips and advice on how to thrive as a traveler, a captivating visual record with hundreds of watercolor illustrations, and a chronicle depicting the incomparable charms of being footloose in France.
The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Cécile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation thirty years ago.
One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake
One More Croissant for the Road follows ‘the nation’s taster in chief’ Felicity Cloake’s very own Tour de France, cycling 2,300km across France in search of culinary perfection; from Tarte Tatin to Cassoulet via Poule au Pot, and Tartiflette. Each of the 21 ‘stages’ concludes with Felicity putting this new found knowledge to good use in a fresh and definitive recipe for each dish – the culmination of her rigorous and thorough investigative work on behalf of all of our taste buds.
The Anomaly by
Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy.
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year.
The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France by John Baxter
John Baxter's The Perfect Meal is part grand tour of France, part history of French cuisine, taking readers on a journey to discover and savor some of the world's great gastronomic delights before they disappear completely.
Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney
Seventeen-year-old Julien is a romantic—he loves spending his free time at the museum poring over the great works of the Impressionists. But one night, a peach falls out of a Cezanne, Degas ballerinas dance across the floor, and Julien is not hallucinating. The art is reacting to a curse that trapped a beautiful girl, Clio, in a painting forever. Julien has a chance to free Clio and he can't help but fall in love with her. But love is a curse in its own right. And soon paintings begin to bleed and disappear. Together Julien and Clio must save the world's greatest art . . . at the expense of the greatest love they've ever known.
The Ingredients of Love by Nicolas Barreau
On a gloomy Friday in November, when Aurelie is feeling depressed after a breakup, she discovers a novel entitled 'The Smiles of Women' in a quaint bookshop on the Ile-St.-Louis. Astonishingly, her restaurant and she herself are featured in its pages. After reading the entire book in one night, Aurelie wishes more than anything to meet the author of the novel because she is convinced that, without even realising it, he has saved her life. However, her wish proves to be a difficult, almost impossible, endeavour.
The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain
Heroic bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street. There's nothing in the bag to indicate who it belongs to, although there's all sorts of other things in it. Laurent feels a strong impulse to find the owner and tries to puzzle together who she might be from the contents of the bag. Especially a red notebook with her jottings, which really makes him want to meet her. Without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions?
And, finally, a true beachy Frenchish read...
A Breath of French Air by H. E. Bates
At the end of a rainy English August the Larkins – all ten of them, including little Oscar, the family’s new addition – bundle into the old Rolls and cross the Channel to escape the hostile elements.
But far from being the balmy, sunny and perfick spot Ma Larkin hoped for, France proves less than welcoming to an eccentric English family. The tea’s weak, the furniture breakable and the hotel manager is almost as hostile as the wind and the rain they’ve brought with them! And when the manager learns that Ma and Pop are unmarried yet sharing a room under his roof, the trouble really begins…
Ooh nice topic choice and picks! These are all new to me ones!
ReplyDeleteHere's my Tuesday Post
Have a GREAT day!
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I’m intrigued by The Anomaly.
ReplyDeleteGreat books. I am tempted to read several of them. I have read The Paris Wife which I loved, it is very good. I have another one by her, about one of Hemingway's later wives, called Love and Ruin, and is about Martha Gellhorn. I have not yet read it.
ReplyDeleteOne More Croissant for the Road is going on my Evil Empire wish list. I adored The Red Notebook -- one of my all-time favorites. And anything by Vivian is a win for me, but Paris especially. Le Road Trip is delightful -- and beautifully done. I also enjoyed Julie and Julia but The Paris Wife didn't knock me out. I think I don't like bio-fiction very much. I don't always trust it.
ReplyDeleteOne More Croissant for the Road sounds like something I might say. Lol. I love your list.
ReplyDeleteI've read Julie and Julia and jthe Paris Wife, own The Red Notebook but have not read yet. Just added three of your titles here to my Goodreads.
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