Guillaume Musso is one of the bestselling authors in France today. In 2009, when I lived in Paris, he was the number two best-selling author, plastered on countless billboards and sold at every train station. According to one 2011 survey, which ranked authors by how many books they had sold in France since 2008, Musso … Continue reading
The book Les Miserables was first published in France in 1862. Written by famed poet and social activist Victor Hugo, Les Miserables is considered by literary scholars as one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. I first read Les Miserables in one of my French literature classes in college, and if you thought … Continue reading
I began the first fifty pages of The Sweetness of Forgetting with a sense of disappointment. Kristin Harmel, it seemed, had gathered together some of the most popular elements of recent women’s fiction and rolled them into one: a small Cape Cod town, a bakery, an unpleasant divorce, a cute, young handyman with a heart of … Continue reading
This week’s article of the week comes, once again, from The New Yorker. Written by Elisabeth Zerofsky, “Of Presidents and Princesses” draws a direct correlation between Nicolas Sarkozy‘s lost bid for re-election as French president and his stance on traditional French culture. More specifically, his attacks on the French literary classic The Princess of Clèves … Continue reading
While I have always loved tea, it did not become an obsession until college. During my freshman year, I discovered Mariage Frères tea. My French literature and language professor for textual analysis invited our class over to her house one cold winter afternoon. I do not recall why she invited us, but I do remember … Continue reading
Even though I went to graduate school in French history, I had never heard of the lace smuggling trade in seventeenth-century France. For this reason, I picked up The Ruins of Lace: A Novel of France, Freedom, and Forbidden Lace. Based on extensive research, Iris Anthony spins an intricate dark historical drama in The Ruins … Continue reading
Roses are red, violets are blue–and they make for sweet tea, which you should try too! In addition to being a bibliophile, I am also a bit of a tea snob. In fact, I often engage in tea drinking while reading. Which is why I thought it was slightly criminal not to have anything about … Continue reading
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