1 comments about Paris Complete Residents' Guide.

1. As long as I've been a Paris resident, the city is constantly changing and it's nearly impossible to keep up. The Paris Explorer is helpful in demystifying some of the quirks (?) of French paper work and how to get things done!! French law changes frequently and the Paris Explorer will alert readers about what they should be on the look out.
   
   The guide is well-written, informative and will equip its readers with some well-researched knowledge.

2 comments about The Marche (Heritage Guides).

1. There are very few books available that specifically address the Marche area but this is one super book that has it all. It contains a logical flow, had detailed maps, an excellent index, provides history and current information and, offers specifics on Where to Stay, Where to Eat and What is a Must to see. Well worth the money. This is a book for the backpack when in the Marche region



2. since le Marche is the region of Italy from which my family emigrated to America two generations ago, and since it does not get written about very much (which is why it isn't overrun with tourists), my heart skipped a beat when i read this book's description.
   
   as it turns out, this isn't really a book, in the sense of a work that has been vetted by a publisher at arm's length from its authors. rather, it's a "student project", by four students who haven't yet mastered elementary matters such as grammar and correct spelling of place names.
   
   the photos, which appear to have been taken with a pocket-sized digital camera, are as small as the viewing screen on the back of such a camera, and they have the look of having been printed out on a home-office computer. fine for a class project, but a rip-off for a slim volume costing $30.
   
   if you're interested in the giddy gushings of four self-absorbed college girls (there might also be a college boy somewhere in the mix), this is the "book" for you.
   
   but, if you're interested in learning anything about le Marche (aside from the fact that, like almost everywhere else in the world, it has beaches along its shores and restaurants in its interior), your wait for an informative book on this subject is not yet over.

5 comments about Into a Paris Quartier.

1. Like Jan Morris' "A Writer's House in Wales" which is part of the same National Geographic Directions travel series, this is a quick-reading, relaxed, and very personal look at a part of the world with special significance to the writer. And personal this is -- Diane Johnson practically gives the reader directions to her own front door. I hope this hasn't created any security problems for her.
   
   Johnson walks her reader through a history of her neighborhood, St.-Germain, Paris' sixth arrondissement, and its mix of history, literary associations, and notable architecture. It's all interesting enough, but I felt somewhat disconnected from it all, and am not convinced I came away from the book with a really good sense of what the neighborhood is all about today -- as opposed to in D'Artagnan's day, which she spends almost as much time discussing.
   
   Maybe the problem is that this view is *so* personal, we have to care about or be interested in the author to really get the most out of seeing her home and her neighborhood through her own eyes. Because I've never read any of Diane Johnson's novels or other books -- and in fact had never heard of her before I picked up this title -- I didn't really have much invested in her as a guide. After finishing the book, I still don't.
   
   I have a number of books about various Parisian neighborhoods stacked up in my to-read pile, and I will be interested to see how this one ends up comparing to others in the genre. On its own merits, though, it is a fast and ultimately lightweight read: a nice breeze through the town, but not, perhaps, a tour I'd immediately recommend to other reader-visitors.



2. Nice book. The writing isn't very clever, nor humorous. Pretty straight forward. However, if one knows the 6th as I do, I found the book very informative and I felt like I learned a lot about this wonderful arrondisement! If you don't know the 6th district, I'd pass on reading the book. If you do, I think it's a must read.



3. This book is absolutely marvelous! Especially for those who travel to Paris and like to stay in the St. Germain des Pres district, as I do. Ms. Johnson gives many informative bits of info on this area in Paris. It's an absolute delight to read!



4. I read the reviews of this book after reading the book. I read the book while planning for and staying in an apartment in the St. Germain des Pres neighborhood. I have read Ms. Johnson's fictional series as well. Like those books, I found this to be a pleasant conversational recounting of her relationship with her neighborhood.
   
   What I have enjoyed about Ms. Johnson's albeit modest fictional works is her feel for the shared spaces of the American living in Paris, as an ex-patriot or accidental player in the space, with the French and with Parisian life. They seem to be stories of what happens the space of the intersection and the effect on both the American players and the French. I found the same quality in this book.
   
   Into a Paris Quartier isn't a guidebook or a profound memoir. It's a conversational piece written in the greatest part from the subjective point of view of the author's influences and experience. Take it for that, and I think it meets expectations. Ask for something more or different and you probably really want to read a different book.



5. I wish I had read these reviews before purchasing this book (these reviews do not appear for the paperback version). I was so disappointed by this book. The storyline is disjointed and the writing style (those long, rambling sentences) is downright annoying. I liked the photo on page 74 and not much else. I wanted to sell my copy of this book, but used paperback copies are going for 49 cents. I guess that tells you something.

2 comments about Pocket Map and Guide Paris (EYEWITNESS POCKET MAP & GUIDE).

1. comprehensive and very conveniently small guide to be easily carried in pocket or purse--this is the perfect Paris companion!



2. Whew! What a lot of information in such a small package! This little foldout map can easily fit into a shirt pocket. So, portability is a great plus; one can walk around Paris with this map and guide in your pocket. Of course, this plus has its corollary minus: Goodness, the type is small! I have a somewhat hard time reading the text. Not a huge problem, but something that needs to be noted.
   
   In this compact work is the obligatory map of the Metro, so one has a sense of where the stops are and what stops one might need to see certain sights. The map of the historic center provides a lot of information--but I need a magnifying glass (the ravages of age!).
   
   There is a useful area by area examination of Paris (not based on the arrondissements), including sights to see, restaurants (Ah! I recall the joy of having lunch at "Les Deux Magots"), and the like. Even though this is a slim and brief guide, choices selected are reasonable.
   
   So, here's the tradeoff. Relatively brief consideration with small print versus portability. The guide fits easily into a shirt pocket. For what it is, though, it seems a reasonable investment.

No comments about The Invention of Chic: Therese Bonney and Paris Moderne.

No comments about Travel + Leisure's Unexpected France (Travel + Leisure Unexpected) (Travel + Leisure Unexpected) (Travel + Leisure Unexpected).

No comments about St. Petersburg.

No comments about France (Eyewitness Travel Guides).

5 comments about Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer.

1. I read this the spring it came out, the spring I learned that once again there would be no summer vacation, no breaking free of the time zone. As much as a book can stand in for actual experience, this did, and I got a rollicking review of Romantic figures in the bargain. Holmes obviously conducts meticulous research, but he writes it up in a style that has the sweep of a fine novel. He is a master at marrying study and action.



2. Beginning with a journey tracing Stevenson's walking tour in France, Holmes shows himself to be both a remarkable adventurer and writer. The thing that comes out clearly when he discovers the ruins of a bridge crossed by Stevenson is that the past is the past. And while it has an impact on the world today, it is gone. If you only read it for the first essay, it is well worth the money. The other essays explore other themes that affect biographers. A superb book that should be read by anyone interested in the mysrerious relationship between biographer and subject.



3. This is the kind of book at which Holmes, in my view, excels. I'm not that particularly fond of his painstaking mammoth biographies of Shelley and Coleridge because, well, they're too run-of-the-mill and not all that much fun to read.-In other words, just the opposite of books like this one. This type of book, where the relationship between Holmes and the author he is writing about is constantly in play add a mystery and a haunted quality inherent in the time elapsed between Holmes' time and the author's that keeps the readers attention constantly transfixed (or, at least, this reader's). As Holmes himself puts it, "The material surfaces of life are continually breaking down, sloughing off, changing, almost as fast as human skin." Examples: The passage on Shelley's view of the double, the "ghost of the living person" the view of which signified the shadow world invading this one; Shelley's view that this is what was happening to him just before he drowned himself is the most affecting passage I've read on Shelley's end, and together with the photograph of the Casa Magni, which I'd never actually seen, and whose setting Mary Shelley said caused them to be in touch with the unreal sent shivers up my spine. It's not to be missed.-The section on Nerval was also interesting, as were the others. Curiously, the same sort of thing seems to have affected Nerval "...Here began for me what I shall call the overflowing of dreams into real life." Both sections are excellent and Holmes' speculation that "Nerval's whole work was a form of suicide note" seems right on the mark. The other sections are intriguing as well, but these two haunted me the most. In a moment of brave self-exposure where Holmes is following Shelley's footsteps in Rome, he recounts a dinner where they toasted Shelley as a fellow-exile and his name "rang to the roof." Holmes writes, "I sat there looking at my plate dangerously close to tears. I...determined to write a book for people like them too, who would never read it, people who have lost most things except hope."-You've succeeded Mr Holmes.



4. Richard Holmes is a man profoundly obsessed with other people's lives. This book reflects the process of how the author struggled to come to terms with the mysterious past which is flitting away from us. It is also a book which tries to answer the question "Why should it matter?"
   
   Whether hunting for the Shelleys in Italy or pursuing Stevenson in the Cevennes, Holmes manages to convey the feeling that it does matter, that these people had their share in shaping European culture and literature.
   
   However, there is a price to be paid if one aims to bring ghosts back to life. The author is ever balancing on the fine edge of cutting himself off from the present, of falling into the abyss of the past and never wake up again, and he is painfully aware of this.
   
   Holmes seems to conceive of biography as a temporary annihilation of his own self in order to grasp the world that his subjects moved in. The literary outcome is a great and full picture. On a personal level, it is trauma.
   
   This book will (if it is not already) be a classic for anyone remotely interested in reading or writing biography.



5. I waited almost 20 years to track down this book. My advice to you, Reader, is don't wait a single minute. "Footsteps" is delightful from multiple vantage points. Holmes is a fine, empathic writer who reveals the inner workings of the process of biography. He is also an insightful travel writer with a strong sense of place. While I greatly enjoyed his chapter on Robert Louis Stevenson, I was fascinated by his treatment of Gerard de Nerval. This is one literary byway that should not be missed.

No comments about Teach Yourself World Cultures: France.