4.
Paris dreaming
Bonjour! Reading transports us to new, exciting places.
In these days of pandemics and rising travel costs, novels have never been so welcome.
Have you ever dreamt of visiting Paris? How about going there via novel or memoir this summer?
In 'The Piano Shop on the Left Bank,' the sights, smells, and atmosphere of a very special part of that city, are evoked by T E Carhart, an American living in Paris, who discovers a piano repair shop.
Moving from the streets of 18th-century Paris to the lavender fields of Grasse, 'Perfume' by Patrick Suskind sensually evokes a world both earthy and sublime, and a protagonist with a killer sense of smell.
Pick up Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog' and be transported behind the façades of a grand Parisian apartment building in the respectable 7th arrondissement.
'The Last Days of New Paris' by China Miéville is an alternate history in which surrealist artists join partisans in Paris to fight groups of Nazis.
‘A Moveable Feast’ is Ernest Hemingway’s memoir about his 1920 expat journalist era, and one of the best books about Paris for those who want to read about bohemian life in the city of love.
‘My life in France’ is an autobiography by Julia Child, a collection of linked autobiographical stories recounting her culinary experiences in Paris, Marseille and Provence. It’s a delightful book about the things Julia loved most in her life: her husband, France, and the “many pleasures of cooking and eating.”
Direct from our Reading Doctor, more ideas for you await in this link.
