Books?

[letrangere]

What are people reading by the pool or in the garden this summer?  Any with French themes worth recommending?  How about Savoie Fair by Caroline Guigonnet reviewed in the magazine this month?  Or anything else in English or French.  M

[Russethouse]

Haven't tried it yet but I read a review of the new biography of John Mortimer - not much to do with France though.

Apparently Mr Mortimer gave this author his blessing and then changed his mind !!

I suspect he has had an interesting life.

I have to declare an interest though as John Mortimer lives in a very pretty village not too far from me,(and he has waxed lyrical about the area recently in the national press) its also the place where Vicar of Dibley is filmed and John Thaws, Goodnight Mr Tom was set.

[letrangere]

Gay, this is strange beyond belief.  Whilst searching my shelves for a book to read yesterday morning, I finally opted for John Mortimer's, Summer's Lease, a wonderful story of a family renting a beautiful house in the Chianti.  The thought crossed my mind that despite the ever increasing number of books set in France, no one has ever written anything quite as good as this.  I recommend it to everyone, I'm on my third or fourth read.  We also loved the Rumpole series.  I'm already preparing Christmas Wish List at Amazon (assuming they can find a box big enough!) so may well add this.  Thanks.  M

[GRT17]

I too enjoyed Summer's Lease, I have left that one in the house for our visitors to read.

Currently I am enjoying " Nos enfants si gates" a novel by Madeleine Chapsal. A good read, lots of up to the minute words and expressions. The story is about a French family from Paris, on holiday on the Ile de Re.

Gill

(apologies for lack of accents)

[letrangere]

Gill, welcome back and many thanks for the recommendation, sounds perfect.  I've never been to Ile de Re but would love to.   M

[zeb]

Well, I'm reading French Women Don't Get Fat, which I believe you recommended last year M!!

Not really poolside reading, but too chilley for the pool and I've eaten too much cheese and ice cream (Cart D'Or do a fabulous La Belle Helene flavour!) so I've borrowed said book, done the leek soup weekend and feel a little lighter! But, spoke to son (formerly lived in Paris and now Perpignon) of French neighbours and he said that although there is less obesity in France than in the UK, US etc, the slim, middle-aged, chic French women are really only those in top positions in Paris who fear for their jobs/husbands and/or reputations. Obesity, sadly, is becoming more apparent, according to Alain, in Paris, Marseilles and Perpignon as well as la Charente unfortunately.

However, he did comment on the fact that you can tell the British women in the shops all over France by their bad clothes, bad hair cuts and weight! Oh dear. Usually he is so charming.

Anyway, I am enjoying the book, enjoying my food now (all fresh and smaller portions) so hopefully I will soon be back in my size 12s!!

PS Have just finished a Deborah Moggach book "These Foolish Things" about the creation of a very English retirement home in Bangalore, which my ma left here and it was very funny!

[Tresco]

I've been reading things I had never got round to reading before. A few examples, none to do with France:

The Man on a Donkey (H.F.M Prescott) Historical Novel/Chronicle, (Pilgramage of Grace, Tudor England). I really enjoyed this book, having owned it for something like 25 years!, Got me rooting around on the internet for further background too.

London Fields (Martin Amis) - i'd had it for 5 years and thought it was rubbish, couldn't get past the first 2 pages. I'm a convert to mr clever clogs now, it's a fantastic book.

After that I needed something a bit less intellectually strenuous, but still not 'chick lit' by a long stretch - Small Island (Andrea Levy), a novel set in Post WW2 England - immigration, predjudice, love, soooper!

 

[GRT17]

I love Deborah Moggach's style, haven't read the book listed above but will aim to do so, I think she wrote a book of short stories called "Changing babies" which I enjoyed very much. I will also look for "Small Island".

Gill

BTW I am not sitting by the pool as we don't have one and anyway I am grafting in the U.K. at present while the maison secondaire is let.

[letrangere]

Thanks everyone, I'm certainly going to check out Deborah Moggach.  Did a search on Amazon simply using the word "France", results of course ran into the hundreds.  I see Patricia Atkinson's sequel is out in hardback, La Belle Saison, and yet another(?) Carole Drinkwater, A Celebration of Olives. 

Has anyone read Instructions for Visitors by Helen Stevenson?  That had very mixed reviews on Amazon with some saying it was puerile, Mills & Boon rubbish whilst others said it was best thing written on France.  And how about Almost French by Sarah Turnbull.  Isn't she an Aussie living in Paris?  Comments anyone?

M

[Russethouse]

Decisions, decisions - can I bear to attempt another Carol Drinkwater book - will curiosity overcome dislike ??

[GRT17]

I struggled to finish "Instructions for Visitors" it seemed to get a bit tedious. As for the books by Carol Drinkwater, after the Olive Farm I found the others less exciting.

 

I still have the third book, the latest one, to read in the "House in the Sunflowers" series and look forward to this.

Gill

[Val3]

I loved Instructions for Visitors but it did suit my frame of mind at the time. I've just finished Patricia Atkinson's La Belle Saison - loved it as I did The Ripening Sun.

Found Carole Drinkwater's books a bit icky but have read them all the same ...

Val3

[letrangere]

Found Carole Drinkwater's books a bit icky but have read them all the same ...

Val, don't worry, your amongst friends here.  I'll own up and admit I only read the second one, the Olive Season, because of the picture on the cover, and I don't even think it was her house!  And I read a bit of the third one everytime I'm in my local bookshop at an hour when I won't bump into anyone I know!  Will definitely be getting the next Patricia Atkinson when it comes out in paperback.  Gill's right about Ruth Sylvestre.  Her sunflower series books are really lovely.  M

[zeb]

Must say I'm getting a wee bit tired of the books about folks' new life in France and have given myself a rest, so am reading other stuff - all lightweight really but enjoyable such as Ruth Rendell's "The Blood Doctor" (and see earlier posting).

However, having said that, we took Susie Kelly's books (amongst others) with us for our week near the Vendee coast in June and I loved them, even my partner, who normally reads very highbrow stuff, enjoyed them. The first, Best Foot Forward, is about her walk from La Rochelle to Lake Geneva. You have to wonder at this mad 50 something person, who has hardly walked anywhere before, in taking on this task but the book is beautifully written and her descritpions of the countryside and the folks she meets are superb. Her second book "Two Steps Back" (I think) is equally enjoyable. We also took the book by that guy who renovated in the Limousin and really had to laugh as he supposedly wrote a How to Renovate column for one of the French mags but when presented with this mammoth task in real life, seemed quite clueless and got the builders in!

Am hoping to start up a book exchange/library here for the winter months if I can get organised!

[Russethouse]

Rick Stein(see post in food & drink forum) read a piece from Elizabeth David this evening - you know I think I am going to read them again .....

[SaligoBay]

The Nibelungenlied.   Again.   Brilliant.   Don't you just hate Hagen?   Nasty nasty nasty piece of work.   Anyway, lots of great warriors slaying each other mightily, and many comely maids to make glad the eyes and hearts of the noble survivors.   

And anyone who thinks Harry Potter's invisibility cloak was an original idea on Ms Rowling's part, think again....

French connection?    Ummmm, let's see...... Worms was the capital of the first kingdom of Burgundy, will that do?  Maybe that's stretching it a bit?

Did you know that both the Huns and the Burgundians indulged in the strange habit of binding the skulls of female infants to elongate them?

 

[Russethouse]

I see LF is just reviewing 'A Year in the Merde' and having read that ( I took a long time to get into it) I have just bought 'Merde Actually'.....

On the biography tack again, Ned Sherrin has just published his, which could be fun - apparently its rather a thick book

[NannyP]

Sadly, I'm back home in UK now, but whilst I was beside the pool, and whilst i was enjoying utter peace and quiet, I read The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck. No French connection at all, but so nice to have the time to read an old classic.

[Victoria]

Yes, I enjoyed 'Instructions for Visitors' - in fact it led me to Ceret - the small town where it is set.  Really beautiful place which we probably would never have seen had it not been for the book.We do this often - we're 'place groupies' - and we always have to visit places we've read about.  We went to Louviers where 'On Rue Tatin' is set and found Susan Loomis' lovely house by the church.  She was in the garden gathering up the children's things and we just walked quickly by, terribly English, not wanting to gawp (or to be seen to gawping) - in fact I think we're serial gawpers.  But at least we don't pester people - can't believe that Peter Mayle had to move house because people kept knocking on his door.  I know he made a lot of money out of it of course but still!

Just finished 'Perfume in Provence' and want to go to Opio now - no-one to upset there though as Lady Laceholes is long gone.  Any more literary junkies?

 

 

 

[Russethouse]

Victoria, have a look for Trampled over Lilies by the same author as Perfume in Provence - I really enjoyed it and it will give you a long list of places to visit !!

[Victoria]

Thank you Gay - will look out for it. 

We have a holiday home in the foothills of the Cevennes so I was pleased to come across Stevenson's 'Travels with a Donkey' recently.  I had thought this was out of print but have found a new Penguin Classic so can't wait to get stuck into that and then do the tour (sadly not with a Modestine of my own). 

 

[SaligoBay]

Any more literary junkies?

Yup, I'm one!!   Had to sit down at the Althing, just so overcome by it.  Hranfnkel's Saga, Jane Austen's house, Chinua Achebe's Africa, Walter Scott's Kenilworth, Dickens' London, Daudet's Windmill, Bible lands. 

There are worse obsessions in life!

 

[letrangere]

Any more literary junkies?

And another!  I used to take visitors to Paris to the street in Pigalle where the laundry in Zola's, l'Assommoir, was said to be located.  (Can't remember by whom.)  I used to tell them this was far more interesting than queueing for hours to get into the Musee d'Orsay, though oddly few were convinced.  Balzac's house was another on my "sights the regular tours don't take you to".  I'd even point out the back door through which he used to escape to avoid his creditors.  Victor Hugo's house, of course, interesting but a bit run of the mill. 

We've been all over the Himalayas in the footsteps of Lady Betjeman.  Down certain sections of the Ganges following after Eric Newby.  Even took his detour to Plassey where, as we all know, the English defeated the French.  This was the place his long suffering wife felt, quite understandably, was literally the limit and the ugly subject of divorce finally reared its head.  If you've ever been there, you will fully understand why.  Still, everyone has to have one big non-event in their life.  This will no doubt be it. 

Back in France, are we talking about Lady Fortescue's, Perfume from Provence?  Apologies for appearing so picky but if there's another with a similar title I'd like to read that too.  Anyone remember the accustions of plagarism that flew from some quarters (presumably her relatives) when Mayle's, A Year in Provence was published?  I suppose they've given up now everyone has jumped on the bandwagon.  And talking more of Provence, have I mentioned The Magic of Provence by Yvone Lenard?  This irritated me so much I actually wrote a scathing review that I'm still toying with sending to Amazon.  Woman buys a house on last day of holiday, with only minutes to spare miraculously finds the best interior decorator for miles to renovate it, pays her huge sum of money, flies back to the States, returns a year later and voila the house of her dreams is ready and waiting so out comes the typewriter and she rattles off a book.  It's all so unlikely. 

Victoria, you're right, Stevenson's, Travels with donkey has been out of print for years.  I guess I was fortunate in that someone died and left me a copy (and a first edition Lady Fortescue (could this be my pension?)).   It's a joy, isn't it?  The book, that is, not my pension...

Now what am I going to read today?  M

 

 

[Victoria]

MWJ Yes, sorry, it was Perfume from Provence. 

I'm obviously still a novice in the 'groupie' stakes - I do envy you both all those exotic trips.  It gives another dimension to travel doesn't it? 

Some years ago, before it was widely known that James Herriot's sagas were set in Thirsk we managed to identify the town and had a holiday in the Dales.  I went into Thirsk one Sunday morning with kids in pushchair, found his house where he practised with 'Seigfried' and 'Tristan' and there coming down the steps was the man himself.  Of course I should have been armed with his latest book and asked for his autograph but I don't collect  autographs.  Instead my knees turned to jelly (we're not used to celebrities where we live) and I just gibbered something about liking his books and he shook my hand warmly and went off.   My claim to fame!

 

[Loiseau]

...I was pleased to come across Stevenson's 'Travels with a Donkey' recently. ... can't wait to get stuck into that and then do the tour (sadly not with a Modestine of my own). 

 

I wouldn't be too sure, Victoria!  I have just been in the Nord/Pas de Calais, and several places hire out donkeys that you can take either on a half-day walk or for a week's trek.  Perhaps this idea has spread to the Cévennes!

Angela