Books |
Audrey Hepburn said, “Paris is always a good idea.” So….
By
Published: Apr 16, 2019
Category:
Travel
Here’s one version of a perfect day in Paris: Have breakfast at the Marly. Be moved by a silent stroll through the “Deportation” memorial to the 200,000 French Jews taken in World War II. Lunch at the Rotisserie du Beaujolais. Lose all sense of time at a classical music concert in the little church by the Seine. Go downstairs at the Louvre to buy the tickets that let you skip the line, mist up at the Degas pastels at the d’Orsay, wonder why no one ever told you about Napoleon III’s apartment in the Louvre. Swoon over the twice-cooked pork at the Coin de Gourmet on the Rue Dante. After, though it’s too corny even to consider, set sail on a Bateau Mouche and sneak a kiss.
You’ve got a map. A Zagat. Maybe you’ll want a few more books…
Parisians’ Paris
Bill Gillham, an English academic and child psychologist who has made dozens of trips to Paris, had a brilliant idea: See less — that is, make a visit that’s locally based. How? Choose “one of the many village-like communities that make up the city,” then venture out occasionally to the major sights. What a radical idea. Don’t visit Paris. Live there.
Paris Chic: A Style Guide
This is like a visit with a friendly, clear-eyed woman you trust immediately. It’s the best kind of guidebook — you not only get information, you get it in context. At 230 pages, published in nicely bound soft covers, with whimsical illustrations and terrific photographs, Inès de la Fressange’s book is the best guide to personal style — and to Paris — I’ve ever seen. If I were a woman and had any relationship to Paris, I’d memorize it.
Quiet Corners of Paris
It’s hard to imagine that a book with this title would be a shocker, but you’ll be shocked — and thrilled — by what’s in these pages. Many tour books promise to deliver “secrets” and never do. This one does. Many times. Its secret: It does not stick to the four or five arrondissements where tourists congregate. Instead, it draws on the entire city — and thus challenges you to leave your literal “comfort zone” and get out to neighborhoods where real Parisians can be found. And more: really quiet zones: villas, gardens, courtyards, fountains and passages.
Sophie the Parisian: Her dictionary of L’art de vivre
French women are a world unto themselves. And the women of Paris? More so.In her A-Z guidebook/dictionary to city and psyche, Nathalie Peigney channels “Sophie,” who knows all things Paris and shares her knowledge as if you were her best girlfriend. Her subjects look like the obvious (shopping and fashion) but her point-of-view is her own: the “art de vivre.” Champagne, seduction, the education of children — simply dressed, seemingly discreet Sophie explores the paradoxes of the sophisticated life. If you read it aloud, you can almost hear her accent. Which is, of course, charming. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here.]
A Half Hour from Paris: 10 Secret Day Trips by Train
The most exciting travel guide I’ve read in years. Its author, Annabel Simms, is a Brit who moved to Paris and developed a deep knowledge of the fifth arrondissement. Business took her to the modern, soulless inner suburbs. Then an urge “to get into the countryside, any countryside” led her to discover France’s excellent network of commuter trains — and what she was looking for. The 21 day trips of this book, which has been revised and updated several times, are the happy result.
Paris: Made by Hand: 50 Shops Where Decorators and Stylists Source the Chic & Unique
You wander a city, skipping the establishments you know well. Soon your eye spots what you’ve overlooked. One find leads to another. Before you know it, you have a collection of shops that are one-of-a-kind and out-of-time — restored objects and furniture, fabrics not seen for decades, paper you’d never put in a Hewlett-Packard tray, vintage jewelry and more. And you have a list of workrooms that specialize in unlikely services. Umbrella repair, anyone?
Paris Patisseries: History, Shops, Recipes
This book is 160 oversized pages of exquisite food porn. Recipes? Twenty-five of them are sandwiched in the back of the book, in smallish type. Preparation? There’s not a single shot of a cook whipping batter or pouring chocolate. Text? A history of desserts and baking in France by Pierre Hermé, a well-known pastry chef. It’s pleasant. Informative. And altogether optional. Photographs? Ah, Christian Sarramon’s big, close-up shots of ready-to-serve desserts are the glory of the book. There are some double-page spreads, lush as centerfolds. There’s even a shiny domed individual cheesecake, topped by a raspberry, explicit (say I) in its sensuality.
Paris and her Remarkable Women: A Guide
Lorraine Liscio profiles sixteen women closely associated with Paris, in neat mini-profiles that end with a sprinkling of kibbles — information about their residences and gravesites, books and movies. Camille Claudel, for example. As a 12-year-old, she found her grandfather’s kiln and started working with clay. “From that time on, she forced friends and family members to pose for one another and habitually missed meals to devote herself to her work,” Liscio writes. Soon she made her family move to Paris. At 18, she became Rodin’s student; he quickly promoted her to assistant and then to model and lover…
Paris Quiz: How Well Do You Know Paris?
Let’s forget for a moment the arduous Paris, the everyday Paris, and look at the capital in a new light. What if Paris were nothing but a giant playing field? What if the roads, the monuments, the statues and the history of the capital were the pretext for a thousand questions? Okay, a history and culture quiz. I can handle that. But only on a level playing field. Which this is not…
“What to do in Paris” includes reading. If you read Hemingway’s “Movable Feast” while there, you might as well kiss some other clichés on the mouth: a track suit and running shoes, These might be better choices.
Mission to Paris
The first paragraph of Alan Furst’s novel should convince you:
In Paris, the evenings of September are sometimes warm, excessively gentle, and, in the magic particular to that city, irresistibly seductive. The autumn of 1938 began in just such weather and on the terraces of the best cafés, in the famous restaurants, at the dinner parties one wished to attend, the conversation was, of necessity, lively and smart: fashion, cinema, love affairs, politics, and, yes, the possibility of war—that too had its moment. Almost anything, really, except money. Or, rather, German money. A curious silence, for hundreds of millions of francs — tens of millions of dollars — had been paid to some of the most distinguished citizens of France since Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933. But maybe not so curious, because those who had taken the money were aware of a certain shadow in these transactions and, in that shadow, the people who require darkness for the kind of work they do.
Between Meals
In 1926, A.J. Liebling had graduated from college and had bungled his first job as a reporter in Providence, Rhode Island. It seemed to his father that this was a good time for him to study for a year in Europe. Liebling pretended to protest. “I’m thinking of getting married,” he lied. “Of course, she’s ten years older than I am….” The story of his romance — which was utterly fabricated — worked like a charm. His father, eager to help his son avoid a disastrous marriage, not only bought him a steamship ticket, he gave him a $2,000 line of credit. And Liebling went to Paris and began to eat.
