1 comments about Floating Through France: Life Between Locks on the Canal du Midi (Travelers' Tales Guides).

1. This was a very enjoyable travelogue written by a group of adventurous women. It tells of their experiences while cruising on the canals in France. Their story brought back many wonderful memories. I made a similar trip on the canals and rivers of Brittany in 1999 with five female friends. This is the book we talked about writing after our trip and never got around to doing. I enjoyed it so much that I purchased a copy for each of my fellow travelers. My thanks to Barbara Euser and her friends for a delightful book.

No comments about Fodor's France 2009 (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1 comments about The Most Beautiful Villages of Normandy (The Most Beautiful Villages Series).

1. Excellant book. Excellant purchase. Good delivery. No complaints.

2 comments about Gourmet Paris: What to Eat Where, Dish by Dish.

1. I'm planning a restaurant-centered trip to Paris for next spring, and am finding this little book an invaluable tool in my research efforts. The author has laboriously evaluated dozens if not hundreds of Parisian restaurants in terms of their execution of various regional cuisines and specialties. For example, if you're looking for a restaurant that specializes in the cooking of Lyon or the Auvergne, he'll have numerous recommendations--many of them small and off the beaten path, and unremarked-on even by the Paris Zagat guide, let alone Frommer or Patricia Wells. By the same token, if you simply must try a dish of aligot, pouchouse, or tablier de sapeur--because you've read about them in Elizabeth David or Waverley Root--you'll be steered directly to them. The book is small enough to carry in one's pocket while walking around the city, and contains enough information about the recommended restaurants (opening hours, phone, other specialties) to make ad hoc planning reasonably simple. Indexes by restaurant name and arrondisement are well put together. All in all, a valuable contribution to the small body of truly useful Paris restaurant guides in English.



2. This book is fabulous - witty, well-written and containing all the must-have addresses for the best food in Paris. It's different from other restaurant guides because instead of picking an area or a price-range for your meal, you just choose the dish you feel like eating. So for example if you want some Bouillabaisse you look it up and there are four recommendations, each of which will serve up their own delicious version of the Marseillaise speciality.

   The guide covers eighty different dishes, both French and International - you can find places for sushi, tacos and curry as well as for pot-au-feu, fondue and coq-au-vin. The author, Emmanuel Rubin is great not only at choosing the finest food but also the places with the best atmosphere. He devotes a section at the end of the book to a guide to restaurants with special features; restaurants with a fireplace, restaurants for kids, restaurants in nightclubs...

   Gourmet Paris is definitely the best present I've received since moving to France; I've been using the guide regularly every time I feel like eating out and I've had nothing but great meals since !

No comments about Frommer's Irreverent Guide to Paris (Irreverent Guides).

3 comments about A Traveller's Companion to Venice (The Traveller's Companion Series).

1. Lord Norwich is a consumate storyteller with an incredible ability to weave various sources of information into a compelling narrative--or in this case, a series of anecdotes. I can hardly recommend this highly enough. His choices of material are brilliant, his narration masterful, and the overall sense of place perfectly fitted to the Most Serene Republic.
   
   Also not to miss is his A History of Venice and Paradise of Cities: Venice In the 19th Century. The letters written by Euphemia Ruskin inspired several characters in my second novel!
   
   Venice for Pleasure is useful for the traveler or writer, as well, as is Jan Morris' The World of Venice.



2. I bought this anthology in the months prior to a trip to Venice, after reading editor John Julius Norwich's excellent "A History of Venice", to which it makes a terrific companion volume. These first-hand historical accounts present a colorful review of divergent viewpoints on "La Serinissima", from its distant origins in the Dark Ages up through the 20th century.
   
   Though billed as a "traveller's companion", this is not a guide book in any sense of the phrase; rather, it serves to give one a sense of the history and character of the city and its most prominent features through letters, journals, and essays spanning the nearly 1400 years of its existence. Amongst the commentators are humorists like Mark Twain, great eccentrics like Thomas Coryat, litterateurs such as Henry James and aesthetes like John Ruskin -- and their contrasting views create a multifaceted portrait of this unique city, full of surprises and compulsively readable.
   
   For those who want a sense of the hidden history and culture under the dazzling surface of Venice, who want to more deeply appreciate the city and its sights while experiencing them, this collection is highly recommended.



3. I read this book cover-to-cover before, during, and after a recent trip to Venice. I have to say that more than any of the other books about Venice that I looked at, this one had the most profound and positive impact on my trip and understanding of the city. No, it certainly won't tell you where to stay or eat, and you probably won't find yourself looking up churches and museums in it like you might in the Blue Guide or some other book. But the centuries of travelers' observations compiled in its pages will bring color and life to the city and its monuments and public spaces in a way that no single guide or history could. The passages in this book are not merely informative; they are also highly engaging and range from touchingly serious to laugh-out-loud funny. If you are going to Venice, or if you merely want to travel there from your armchair, get this book before you even consider getting any other!

5 comments about The Most Beautiful Villages of France (Most Beautiful Villages).

1. This is my third copy of this book. I give it as gifts to everyone I love. I live the dream with a home in Turenne (the picture on the cover) My aim is to visit every single one of these exceptional villages.
   
   The book is beautifully illustrated, and the text has the essence of each village exactly. It whets one's appetite to see The Most Beautiful Villages of France.



2. Yes, the villages in this book are beautiful, but having been to France several times, I was a bit disappointed that the photos in this book are all relatively similar. Although some of the photos and descriptions are impressive, this book could have provided more intimate or unique photos of the villages and shops as well as more interesting prose.



3. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and easy reading book. The authors take you through rural France and anyone who has visited there can identify with it. The process of social and cultural acclimmatization is both facinating and entertaining.



4. I have five of these ''Most Beautiful..." books, and have to say there is something of a problem with this particular book. Many of the images here seem to lack any real black tones in them, and consequently lack depth. It is not because they are meant to look misty and atmospheric, it is simply something missing either in the original photography or in the printing. Compared to the images in "The Most Beautiful Towns of England", for example, where the images are pin sharp and full of contrast, they are simply not as well produced.
   
   Still worth the money if you want to see some of the villages here, but there is little within quite as alluring as the cover photo, in my opinion.



5. Dominique Reperant's "village" has fewer than 1,050 inhabitants and he defines "most beautiful" as most preserved. So it's no surprise that his photographic essay that explored even the tiniest corners of France resulted in a collection of impressive shots that showcase France's roots in the medieval middle ages. And while the coffe table sized book will serve as a pleasurable souvenir of a trip into the French countryside, I was considerably underwhelmed with the quality of the photographs. They have a frustrating sameness of style and composition from photograph to photograph that failed to capture the distinctness of each town and enormous variation in the geographical settings of the towns from region to region. And, if there was a rationale to the order in which the towns were presented, it escaped me entirely.
   
   A nice memory to be sure but certainly not a book that I would categorize as so stunning that it would prompt an armchair traveller into booking a trip on the next available flight to France.
   
   Paul Weiss

No comments about Atlas Pocket Classics: France: (Travels with a Donkey, Gleanings in France, A Motor-flight through France).

4 comments about La Belle Saison: Living Off the Land in Rural France.

1. Saussignac
   
   
   
   Row on row of purple globes
   
   fetch a golden autumn morning mist
   
   in Dordogne Valley Gageac
   
   
   
   Looking out on Bergerac
   
   semillon and muscadelle
   
   attach themselves a noble rot
   
   
   
   The ripening sun and Patricia cultivate
   
   
   
   Now she picks, presses, racks and pours
   
   into the aged oak a two year spell
   
   for when the seasons turn
   
   
   
   She writes of family neighbor friends
   
   who lent themselves instead of vinegar
   
   you may taste of honey quince and apricot.
   
   
   
   (In Celebration of Patricia Atkinson's
   
   The Ripening Sun and La Belle Saison)
   
   
   
   Greg Hobbs
   
   9/9/2006



2. La Belle Saison
   Patricia Atkinson
   
   The beautiful season! It surely is. Patricia Atkinson's second book begins with the timeless Ecclesiastes verse: A time ... A time ... A time ...
   
   "It's late August in the Dordogne as I look out over towards the valley of Bergerac from the highest point of my land."
   
   On the verge of another harvest at her vineyard in Gageac, she welcomes us. She pours and talks.
   
   You recall how in The Ripening Sun I moved to a country whose language I did not know to begin a life I was not prepared for? The first red wine harvest turned to vinegar. Our savings drained away. Our marriage foundered. He returned to England. "I threw myself into work with a vengeance."
   
   Now she's an accomplished vintner writing of seasons she shares with family, friends, neighbors, and visitors like us--of hunting wild boar, wild truffles, wild pigeons, wild cepe mushrooms; vines, geese, ducks, and oysters to cultivate.
   
   Preparing a savory meal requires devotion. "They start with Jambourra, a soup of vegetables cooked in the stock that the black pudding was boiled in." Followed by fricassee cooked slowly with onions and carrots all day with meat that "simply" melts in the mouth, then fillets and chops grillade, salad, cheese, and dessert.
   
   She writes in winter, a thousand words at a sitting. Her style is generous and reserved. When you find Patricia, you find her with granddaughters Amy and Beth; neighbors Gilles, Odile, and Juliana; and the lovely Edge who sweats out vendanges, writes zany whimsical hopeful poems, and passes along with Geoffrey, Madame Cholet, Comte de la Verrie, and Fidde.



3. Pros:
   incredibly detailed
   Cons:
   incredibly detailed
   
   The author describes daily routines in painstaking details (emphasis on the pain). On one hand I can learn all the tedious details of tending to a vineyard or going on the hunt or picking mushrooms (sic!). On the other hand, I caught myself skipping entire pages of boring details.
   In some places I could use the expression "watch paint dry".
   
   Overall, I felt sorry for Patricia - her obsession with work, her failure to hook up with Fidde (he dropped dead from the stress and never got to enjoy the fruit of his work). I was also shocked to learn that she was more concerned about the hail which destroyed her harvest than with Fidde's passing. I admire her hard work but understand why she ended up living alone. She is a rural version of career woman.
   
   I also found it annoying that the book contained hundreds of french expressions and sentences which haven't been translated, not even in an annex. I do have a french dictionary at home, but you get the point.
   
   An autobiography is always a tricky subject, especially when the most interesting event of one's life is a neighbour's dog dying of old age or having oysters for dinner with friends. Perhaps Patricia should stick with making her wine at which she says she is really good. I hope her wine is more exciting than her life!



4. I loved Patricia's first book, The Ripening Sun. It was fresh, interesting, engaging. So I could not wait to get this one. What a disappointment! Page after page of adjectives and adverbs describing hunting trips, truffling (briefly) and so on. I have spent some time in that area of France, and I was unaware of how many things are"succulent."
   
   Patricia has a compelling story, but it is absent from this book. Her first book was a real winner because it had a lot going on -- from novice to expert, from married to adrift, from stranger to neighbor. This one is static, and just plain boring. I hope Patricia will keep writing, but next time we need some sort of narrative to hang all the descriptions on.

1 comments about Hot Sun, Cool Shadow: Savoring the Food, History, and Mystery of the Languedoc.

1. Essential reading for anyone planning a trip to the Languedoc. Part guidebook, part history, part culinary journey, part cookbook, it's also the story of a couple who actually did what many of us dream of doing: finding a second home somewhere warmer, sunnier and more relaxed, with, in this case, better food.
   Angie Murrills is a vivid writer with a keen eye, a warm heart and an insatiable appetite for food and food history. Each chapter ties a food - cassoulet, confit, anchovies, cheese - with a Languedoc town or region, illustrated with small, charming ink drawings by Peter Matthews.
   I dare you to read this and not start planning a lazy trip boat trip down the Midi Canal, or a trip to the Camargue, to see a bloodless bull fight in Stes. Maries de la Mer.