Author: staff

Author Charles Timoney recently discussed his new book  ‘A Certain…Je Ne Sais Quoi: The Ideal Guide to Sounding, Acting and Shrugging Like The French” at Smiths Paris Bookshop. Timoney, who has lived and worked in France for 25 years, told his audience that he learned quickly that his ‘O Level French’ was scarcely enough to cope with life here. He noted  “Even if you did understand what was being said, there was always that key word that you didn’t understand…and that was to say nothing of all the words that don’t mean what you think they mean in French.” Continue reading “A Certain…Je Ne Sais Quoi”

This book tells the tale of the secret wife of Louis IV, Francoise d’Aubigne, who during her lifetime managed to make her way from desperate poverty to a brilliant salon life in Paris and the centre of power at Versailles. Married at fifteen to forty-two-year-old Paul Scarron, tragically disfigured and scandalously popular poet of the burlesque, Francoise encountered in her husband’s famous salon all the brilliant, beautiful, comic and tragic characters of the seventeenth-century’s glitterati. After his death she led the life of a merry widow among her friends in the Marais quarter of Paris, before being chosen by the King’s mistress, Athenais de Montespan, as governess for her growing brood of royal batards. Leaving the pleasures of the Marais behind her, Francoise began a new life at court, first at the genteel palace of Saint-Germain, then at the King’s fabulous new folly of Versailles. Continue reading “Madame de Maintenon”

What is the best way to get under the skin of a city such as Paris?  Heather Reyes, editor  of a new anthology of writing on the city, says it is through reading what people have had to say about it. Continue reading “City-lit Paris”

This latest installment to James H. S. McGregor’s “Ground Up” series paints a portrait of Paris in all of its monochrome nuances. The author illuminates the many faces of Paris-medievalist, modernist, expatriate, artist, romantic and  revolutionary-while recalling the unique history of the City of Light. Continue reading “Paris From The Ground Up”

Unleash your inner Gaul with this book which is both hilarious and helpful. “Pardon My French” is an entertaining and useful guide to the words and phrases every Francophile, traveler, student, and word maven should know, with fascinating lore and tidbits that make sense of the Gallic mind-set. Continue reading “Pardon my French”

This book by James R. Gaines tells the story of the French and American Revolutions in a single, thrilling narrative that shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were. Their leaders were often seen as father and son, but the relationship of George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, while close, was every bit as complex as the long, fraught history of the French-American alliance, of which they were also the founding fathers.

 

Like so many others, David Lebovitz dreamed about living in Paris ever since he first visited the city in the 1980s. Finally, after a nearly two-decade career as a pastry chef and cookbook author, he moved to Paris to start a new life. Having crammed all his worldly belongings into three suitcases, he arrived, hopes high, at his new apartment in the lively Bastille neighborhood. 

But he soon discovered it’s a different world en France. Continue reading “The Sweet Life in Paris”

Just in time for Paris’ celebration of  the 120th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower  is a new book by Jill Jonnes which tells the story of the world-famous monument and the extraordinary world’s fair that introduced it.

Since it opened in May 1889, the Eiffel Tower has been an iconic image of modern times-as much a beacon of technological progress as an enduring symbol of Paris and French culture. But as engineer Gustave Eiffel built the now-famous landmark to be the spectacular centerpiece of the 1889 World’s Fair, he stirred up a storm of vitriol from Parisian tastemakers, lawsuits, and predictions of certain structural calamity.

In Eiffel’s Tower, Jill Jonnes   combines technological and social history to create a richly textured portrayal of an age of aspiration, dreams and progress. It is a compelling account of the tower’s creation and a superb portrait of Belle Epoque France.

 

A new biography by Caroline Moorehead “Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution” tells the tale of a woman who witnessed one of the most dramatic periods of history  while playing the part of observer, commentator and sometimes participant. Continue reading “Dancing to the Precipice… one woman’s story”

Foreign Tongue: A Novel of Life and Love in Paris by Vanina Marsot tells the tale of pragmatic professional writer Anna, who has been unlucky in love in L.A., and has come to Paris with keys to her aunt’s empty apartment. Bilingual and blessed with dual citizenship, she seeks solace in the delectable pastries, in the company of old friends, and in her exciting new job: translating a mysterious, erotic French novel by an anonymous author. Intrigued by the story, and drawn in by the mystery behind the book, Anna soon finds herself among the city’s literati-and in the arms of an alluring Parisian-as she resolves to explore who she is . . . in both cultures.

 

Paris is one of those cities that evokes passions and Canadian author Keith Spicer shares his with a new book “Paris Passion, Watching the French Being Brilliant and Bizarre.”   ” She seduced me when I was twenty.” says Spicer ” Half a century later, I’m still her head-over-heels love-addict. Over the centuries, Paris has snared countless lovers, but she always seems to have room for one or two more.” Continue reading “Paris Passions”