3 comments about Walking Easy in the Italian & French Alps (Walking Guides).

1. The Italian dolomites offer the best hiking anywhere. Lost of variety great food reasonable prices and lots of people who speak English. This book gives accurate information, wonderful hotel recommendations and suggests towns I would not have discovered elsewhere. A must for anyone who hikes. The hikes may be easy for some, but it there are lots of more diffucilt options when you get there. We followed the Liptons advice and had a fabulous trip!



2. The descriptions of the walks and of the excursions (presumably car-based) appear very useful; we'll be trying some of them in a few weeks. The book would have been more attractive & useful with more photos, especially color photos, & more maps would also be helpful--but what's there will help a great deal in prioritizing what we do.



3. This book will be appreciated by readers who want to ride up on a ski lift and then start hiking, because most of the hikes in the book begin that way. It's an efficient way of getting up out of the valley and into the high country, instead of hiking up a set of steep switchbacks. We have hiked in the French areas described in the book and have ridden the lifts several times (as many hikers do), but we prefer to hike in more remote, wild areas without ski lifts. Most of the French towns the authors recommend are fashionable ski resorts made up of modern hotels, without the charm of authentic Alpine towns and villages. Other hiking guides are available in English that concentrate on hiking away from the resorts and lifts, where you get to the trailhead by a road or a "navette" (shuttle bus).

No comments about Pierre Loti: Travels with the Legendary Romantic.

No comments about AAA France TravelBook, 5th Edition: The Guide to Premier Destinations (Aaa France Travelbook).

2 comments about Live & Work in France, 6th (Live & Work in France).

1. This guide would be useful to those who are contemplating a move FROM THE UK to France. There are innumerable and exclusive comparisons between the UK and French systems. Those moving from other European Union countries will also benefit. However, those contemplating a move from a non-EU country will find this book less relevant.

   The book provides a useful summary of public information about France, covering basic political and economic structures, residence and entry regulations, transportation, education, employment, and retirement.




2. The caveat that the other reader mentioned is true--the book applies more to those moving from the UK than to Americans moving to France. However, I still find it an excellent source of knowledge, and a very worthwhile purchase, even for Americans. I found that it still contains enough solid information for those from other countries, and very detailed information too. Fine work, IMHO.

5 comments about Our Paris: Sketches from Memory.

1. This is a sweet collection of short pieces, quirky and personal, about a tiny Parisian neighborhood, Paris itself, the French, lots of friends, and a great dog named Fred. Most of all: about Edmund White and his lover Hubert Sorin. Economical yet enjoyably gossipy, kind-hearted, opinionated, informative. Achingly sad, though, because Hubert is dying of AIDS, and in fact does die at the book's end. Definitely worth reading -- especially for fans of Edmund White. Engagingly illustrated by Sorin, who was trained in architecture and took up drawing when he became ill.



2. I love deceptive books.

   Example: _Our Paris_, by Edmund White and Hubert Sorin, is ostensibly a series of short essays, written and illustrated in a fairly direct style, pertaining to life in the city. But in a stunning, disarming preface, White alerts us to the real subtext: his partner's slow death from AIDS. It's this subtext that transforms the book from a pleasant travelogue to a devastating account of loss.

   Lurking beneath the book's shimmering surfaces, and within its numerous lacunae, is the emotional life of a couple threatened by the fast-approaching specter of death. An attentive reading of White's text and Hubert Sorin's illustrations reveals the mauvaise foi, the daily negotiations, the implicit contract of domestic denial that enables an endangered couple to keep death at bay for just a little longer.

   _Our Paris_ looks slight, as if it were merely a pleasant evening's worth of travel anecdotes and gossip. But if you take yourself into this book's confidence, it will reveal unexpected secrets.




3. I picked up this little book for a return flight from Paris to LA. It looked like perfect plane reading -- short, gossipy, topical. And although it lived up to each of those expectations, the devastation implicit in the book (and explicit at the end) hit hard. The book is not easily forgettable -- and probably no less memorable for the passengers and crew of American Airlines flight 45 who watched me become a sniffling, tear-stained disaster.

   It's very intimate, shockingly un-French. White and Sorin invite you into their lives. You feel as if you're at a dinner party listening to them recount(even bicker a little about) their recent mundane adventures. But this intimacy also means that you feel very close to the heartbreaking loss that is the real subject of the book.

   It's a beautiful, touching book. The illustrations complement the text (or the text complements the illustrations) perfectly. But if you want to avoid the mess entirely, try The Flaneur.




4. A delightful book about White and Sorin's life in Paris, with an inevitable undercurrent of sadness, because Sorin is dying. Yet his inability to practice his work as an architect led him to develop the "unique, exuberant drawing style" that illustrates this book.
   
   Here you will meet all sorts of interesting people. The concierge, Madame Denise, and the coiffeuse who tries out all the latest hairstyles on her. Father Pierre Riches, the "kind and elegant" Catholic priest whose hair had been stroked by Cavafy and whose photograph had been taken by Mapplethorpe. Billy Boy, the jewelry designer with 16,000 Barbies (who, tiring of them, invents a doll called Mdvany, a trendy Parisienne who "will not have unlined skirts like certain dolls we could name . . .". PIerre Guyotat, who wrote in a "strange subvocal language of his own devising, one that omitted vowels among other unnecessary luxuries."
   
   And the places in Paris! How nice to live above a bookstore, especially one that revels in the splendidly punny name, Mona Lisait. To write at the Café Beaubourg, where the waiters will be equally attentive to you and your dog, and where the "tabletops were all painted by celebrated French artists but not signed lest they be stolen." To wander the Marais with its delicatessens and seventeenth-century townhouses, its "Kiki Boys" and dogwalkers.
   
   If you have visited Paris, this book will bring back memories. If you haven't, you may find yourself calling a travel agent!



5. Immensely readable, thoroughly enjoyable, and ultimately poignant. White puts it best in his bittersweet, fresh-wound of an afterword: "Despite the catty sound of this book, its name-dropping and archness, I hope at least a few readers will recognize that its subtext is love. Hubert loved me with unwavering devotion . . . I loved him, too, in my cold, stinting, confused way. I wanted to keep him alive as long as possible. This book gave us something to do while waiting for the end."

No comments about The Do It Yourself Expatriate Guide to Living and Working in Europe.

1 comments about Remembering Paris.

1. The primary reason to purchase this book is the wonderful illustrations. While the narrative is evocative, it is a bit dark for me. None the less, having read this book I would love to visit Paris again to discover the city which Tillinac has so vividly described.

No comments about France For Dummies, 3rd Edition.

1 comments about Postmark Paris.

1. For lovers of Nick Bantock (Griffin & Sabine,), and Karen Elizabeth Gordon, (Deluxe Trasitive Vampire, and Paris Out of Hand,) this small volume is a time capsule of a young girl's year growing up in Paris. Told via her stamp collection, (1 colorful French stamp and one life-vignette per page,) it traces her year with her family and school friends until the end, when they must leave Paris to come back to the United States.

   Inspires anyone interested in collage, (although there are no collages in the book per se, I loved it anyway,) Parisian life, and stamp collecting.

   The only thing I wanted was more. Where is the author now? How did her stamp collection become this book? Why is this book out of print?? Alas.

No comments about Willa Cather in Europe: Her Own Story of the First Journey.