5 comments about Chasing Matisse: A Year in France Living My Dream.

1. The author, a writer and artist, is fascinated by the work of Matisse. He and his wife, also a writer, sell their house, leave their desk jobs and go off to France to follow in the footsteps of Matisse. The author chronicles their travels to the places that inspired Matisse - Paris, Collioure in the Pyrenees, Corsica, Belle-Ile off the coast of Britany and the South of France.
   
   In these places the author learns not just to look but also to see. The facts of Matisse's life and his development as an artist are interwoven with the travel adventures of the author and his wife as they live their dream of starting over in a foreign country. A look into the soul of an artist and what we can learn from him if we seek to live the creative life, this book is vastly superior to the shallowness of "C'est La Vie" by Susie Gershman and her vacuous tale of leaving the US to live in Paris.
   
   The only thing missing from "Chasing Matisse" is a map so that the reader can see the locations of the various places that are visited. It's also helpful to have on hand a copy of "Henri Matisse: A Retrospective", Museum of Modern Art 1992, while you read so that you can see the paintings that the author mentions extensively in the book.



2. I'm an American living in France for over 5 years now and I am an amateur painter. And I really like Matisse. So I was really excited when I found this book. I really like the author's humor, he turns what could be boring descriptions of their trip into very funny tales. The book is a mix of a peek into their lives, their adventure in France, the characters they meet, and oh yes, Matisse. I learned a lot in this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the author's sketches and his website.
   
   However, all that said, the book left me wanting more. I got the impression that at the end the author simply got tired of writing or ran out of material. For example, their summer in france only gets a few pages. What was the impact of his search for Matisse? How did it impact his art? Did he just stop chasing Matisse 3 months before he came home? I also would have liked to see more of his sketches as they really helped to imagine the places they went, the hotel rooms, etc.
   
   Overall it was a great book. If you are interested in France, Matisse, or painting, I highly recommend this book!



3. Here I am trapped in a dull grey/brown Northeast winter when I picked up this book and went on a great trip! As an artist I really loved Mr. Morgan's passion for Matisse, for art in general and I loved his sketches! As a traveler who never gets to travel enough I loved the journey he took me on through France. As a matter of fact I'm so inspired that I'm heading to France this June and I'm going to take another long look at Matisse! So if you love art...this is a terrific book, if you love travel...this is a terrific book. If you love both then you're a terrific person who will really enjoy this book!



4. This is a book I'm sure I'll reread many times. The author combines humor with depth, and the sense of adventure is inspiring. Right now I'm smiling, just remembering how pleasurable it was to read this book. author (unrelated to me) really did his research, too; I'm now thinking about Arnheim and Elins with renewed interest -- and I'll pursue some of the other books about Matisse as well.



5. Chasing Matisse: A Year in France Living My Dream
   
   What a load of pretentious nonsense! The author combines samples of his own work (which are child-like), a poor travelogue of France and a brief, dry biography of a great painter (with few original insights) in an offering that had me bored from page one. He asks for sympathy for his financially 'risk-taking' venture whilst telling us of his efforts to sell his house (at $79,000 under value) and fly his children over to France to celebrate Christmas whilst regailing us with descriptions of the expensive meals and swish hotels he stays in. We don't need the constant admiring prose for Henri's work - it speaks for itself.

1 comments about Undiscovered France: An Insider's Guide to the Most Beautiful Villages.

1. Having returned from a trip to Europe this summer, I found this book and was interested in seeing if Yvoire, a cute little French medieval village on the shores of Lake Geneva, was included in this book. We visited Yvoire in mid-June and although the town received some tourists throughout the day, my wife and I spent the night in Yvoire and I couldn't pick out one other tourist in the town. It was our favorite place in all of Europe.

   Sure enough, this book dedicates two entire pages to Yvoire. I had to get this book to look for other French villages we should visit on our next trip! The book is divided up by sections of France (Normandy, Brittany, etc.), and although some pictures look like they are taken in November or March, when I would LEAST want to visit France, most of the pictures are visually pleasing and the village write-up's compliment well.

   Given its price, this book gets five stars in my opinion. I've already got my list of new villages to visit on our next trip!

No comments about Knopf MapGuide: Normandy (Knopf Mapguides).

No comments about Wallpaper City Guide: Marseille (Wallpaper City Guides) (Wallpaper City Guides (Phaidon Press)).

No comments about Fort Towns of France: The Bastides of the Dordogne and Aquitaine.

5 comments about Postcards from France.

1. On the cover of this book, the publisher exudes, "A delightfully irresistible, charming account of a young American girl's year abroad." For once, this kind of description is actually an understatement. Yes, the book is in fact "delightfully irresistible" and truly charming. But the writing is also exceptionally limpid and evocative and betrays an exceptional maturity and talent. Megan McNeill Libby gives us beautifully impressionistic portraits of France, the French, and her very personal struggles, disasters, and triumphs. Her depiction of the French is extraordinarily perceptive and from my own experience living in France totally accurate. At times, I laughed until I cried; more frequently, I caught myself involuntarily smiling and nodding in agreement. But the deeper reward of reading this book is simply seeing the way that Ms. Libby writes and thinks. She is one of those rare authors with whom one falls in love after (no, during) a single reading. I am normally sparing with my praise, but I readily admit to being a gourmand for this book. Merci bien, Megan, and please give us more!



2. The moment I saw this book in the bookstore, I knew I had to get it because Megan did what I have always wanted to do: be an exchange student in another country. This book is just so charming, delightful, and cute. I finally was able to be an exchange student this summer in a Spanish speaking country, and while I was not gone a whole academic year but only for a couple of weeks, I always had this book by my side because so many things were the same. So if you have ever been an exchange student before/hosted one in America, or are going too I recomend this book right away, and if you are just looking for a good book to read you'll have a ball.



3. I am planning on studying abroad to France in 2003 and this book has helped me out in many ways. It told me exactly what I need to know before I go, how the French people are, the school system, and it gave me encouragement. Just reading about how she doesn't regret going makes me want to go even more. I just wished she would have added more about how to handle so much school! Anyway, this book is great to read, even if you aren't planning on going to France. It has a lot of interesting facts that I could never imagine possible. Great book.



4. Yes, this book is very witty and very easy to read. I am en route to France for a year next year as an American exchange student, and I found this book to be very helpful for every aspect of the process--except I wish she added more information like "Why did she switch host families?" and about school. She barely mentioned anything about homework, the lycée, or anything like that. But I loved everything else about the book. It was intriguing and exciting. And also, it's a very nice quick read. If you are, going to be, or was an exchange student, this book is a must-have. Anther book I recommend is The Exchange Student Survival Kit. Au revoir!



5. The author of Postcards from France, Megan Libby, was just 16 when she went to France in 1994 as your typical AFS student. But she wasn't typical: she had her eyes wide open and was able to record, in a series of letters and postcards sent back home, what a humbling experience it is to be a newcomer in another culture. By turns comedic, touching, insightful, and revealing, Postcards from France is always refreshing - and it's highly likely this talented young author will go on to write more books that will be a pleasure to read.

5 comments about Envoy to the Terror: Gouverneur Morris and the French Revolution.

1. Gouverneur Morris has been a long underrated yet instrumental figure during important times. He took a critical part in the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, and he played as crucial a role as his predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, in his position as U.S. ambassador to France during the Terror, when French and American citizens alike sought his intervention, hoping to avoid losing their heads by guillotine. The author provides plausible explanations for this strange obscurity. Melanie Randolph Miller does much to humanize Morris's daily life, times and dilemmas, not to mention the big and small events of the French revolutionary era, deftly weaving into her text original and previously unknown sources, such as his own meticulously kept diaries, letters to and from his mistress, Adele Filleul, comtesse of Flahaut and other paramours, and urgent communications with key protagonists: the falling and fallen royal couple, Danton, Robespierre and the Girondins, among many others. The author's prose is brilliantly precise, enhanced by a dry and intelligent wit, and I agree with reviewers that the book is written with "the discipline of a historian but a novelist's eye," "a page turner." I admit that I found myself dragging my heels as I read along because, truth be told, I didn't really want to finish. In the final stretch, I stayed up way past my bedtime, skimming excitedly to learn what happened in the end, even though of course I already knew. I recommend Envoy to the Terror to anyone with more than a passing interest in the events of revolutionary Paris.



2. Gouverneur Morris may be the virtually unknown, underrated key to understanding the American Revolution, and this exciting new book tells his story from a fresh viewpoint. Thorough-going scholarship combines with bright and lively prose to bring Morris to life and set the record straight on his role in the establishment of the American Experiment. Dr. Miller shows that the conventional view of Morris has been much too limited and is due for thorough revision. This study is much more thorough than the recent popularizing biography of Morris by Richard Brookhiser. If you liked that book, which acknowledges Miller's ground-breaking research, you should read this one to learn the whole story. This book is invaluable for serious students of the Revolutionary period.



3. This well-written and lively book should go a long way in restoring Gouverneur Morris to his rightful place among the Founding Fathers. The prickly Morris has had a pretty bad press over the years, but Envoy to the Terror provides a vigorous, in places brilliant, and ultimately convincing defense of Morris' conduct. Miller shows how Morris energetically defended America's interests under extraordinarily difficult circumstances and successfully disproves charges made both at the time and by later historians that his term as minister to France was a failure.



4. We learn to see our future by looking at our past, and contemporary French and American relations--as they relate to French censure for America's enlarging foreign policy and the U.S. zeal for "democratization" of the larger world--can be viewed in greater focus by narrowing in on the history of our two countries during the French Revolution and the French `Terror' that followed it. The American diplomat pivotal to this period-the only one on whom Washington could depend for analysis of what was happening abroad-was Gouverneur Morris, today one of the lesser known founding fathers, who as United States Minister to France from 1789-92, during the height of the atrocities taking place there, turned out to be profoundly perspicacious in seeing the terrible future of this, one of America's first adventures in `democracy building,' and its unpredictable, and sometimes terrible results. In Dr. Melanie Miller's insightful revisiting of the historical record of relations between the United States and France during this fateful and terrible period, as set down in her recent biography of Gouverneur Morris, Envoy to the Terror, Dr. Miller tells us much that is relevant to French and American relations today.



5. An expansion and refinement of the author's Ph.D. dissertation on the diplomacy of Gouverneur Morris during very troubled times in Paris.
   
   Gouverneur Morris was an intelligent man of solid good sense, with an obvious love for life. Dr. Miller, as befits one holding a law degree, writes as an advocate for the historical reputation of this important figure from our country's early days. In my opinion, she wins her case.
   
   Anyone interested in the diplomatic efforts of our country in its infancy will enjoy this book.
   
   I hope that the talented Dr. Miller will continue writing graceful books on equally interesting subjects.

No comments about Paris by the Numbers: The Ultra Guide to Paris, As Necessary As Your Passport.

2 comments about Lartigue's Riviera.

1. Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) was a unique photographer and certainly one who was able to capture the idiosyncrasies of the French people and places as well as anyone who ever held a camera. He is a realist and a poet and this collection of photographs selected form the thousands he took focuses specifically on the French Riviera.
   
   Strolling bathers along the boardwalks, vistas of the Mediterranean and the flavor of the Cote D'Azur are the subjects here. Lartigue's quality of images includes some colored-infused works that quote pointillism concepts. The works are of the people and the attitudes, the flavor of the region, the quintessential breezy atmosphere of one of the world's great playgrounds. With this collection in hand we are left with memories of a quieter time, of nostalgia, of the beauty of people at ease. Grady Harp, December 05



2. This is a BEAUTIFUL collection of images and notes on this wonderful, joyful Photographer.
   I lost my library's copy & will replace it, it is a rare treasure...

3 comments about World Food France (Lonely Planet World Food Guides).

1. On a recent trip to Paris, my father-in-law brought along the dictionary part of this book. A bit excessive, I had thought. However, we used it in just about every restaurant we visited - French, Moroccan, Vietnamese, you name it. It defines every imaginable food and preparation type. The English to French translation is not quite as complete, but it doesn't diminish the book's value. Well worth the money and the trouble carrying it (at least the dictionary section). I'm buying this one and the Italian one for myself.



2. On a recent trip to Paris, my father-in-law brought along the dictionary part of this book. A bit excessive, I had thought. However, we used it in just about every restaurant we visited - French, Moroccan, Vietnamese, you name it. It defines every imaginable food and preparation type. The English to French translation is not quite as complete, but it doesn't diminish the book's value. Well worth the money and the trouble carrying it (at least the dictionary section). I'm buying this one and the Italian one for myself.



3. This book is a wonderful intoduction to different types of cuisine that is avaiable in france. Its real insight to the interesting combinations of food and preparation techniques, not to mention a great cursory intro to the wine regions in France. I would definately recommend this book to the first time novice in French cuisine!