Perfect for the armchair dreamer -- a few memoirs of
those who've up and done it, bought a house and relocated to France:Carol Drinkwater's The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love and Olive Oil in the South of France
is an enchanting romance about this British actress's love affair with a
Frenchman, Provence and a beautiful olive farm. The sequel, just recently
published, continues her sentimental but satisfying story,
The Olive Season: Amour, a New Life, and Olives Too.
A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France
sounds like my kind of place! Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden, an
American couple, recount their 15 summers establishing a summer home in
the Dordogne valley in southwest France.
Michael Sanders'
From Here, You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and Its Restaurant
explores life in a remote French village, with his family's experiences
with the traditions of food and the inner workings of a bustling
restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
And more for travel
fiends...
Larousse
de Paris: Monuments, Districts,..., a grand volume that
definitively showcases the monuments, architecture, history and everything
else that is the essence of physical Paris.
The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund
White, presents a different view of Paris from a street promenader's point
of view.
Stanley Karnow, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Vietnam: A History,
lived in Paris as a Time magazine correspondent during the '50s. Thus his
memoir, Paris in the Fifties.
The First Time I Saw Paris,
also written by Karnow and accompanied by the fabulous photographs of
Peter Miller, captures the soul of Paris in a wonderful way.
Orgasmic Days in the South of France
showed up on our screen a few weeks ago, and although we haven't read it,
it sounds like it is a must-have if you're traveling in the south of
France, particularly the Cote d'Azur.
Coming Down the Seine, the latest of the Lost and Found series, is a gem
of a book, the memoir of an Irishman who navigated the Seine river back in the early 1950s. And don't forget, from the same publisher, Theodore Cook's Old Provence,
originally written in the early 20th century, and reissued with great
acclaim.
And can't forget to mention Peter Mayle's A Year in
Provence,
Toujours
Provence, and
Encore
Provence, and his latest
French Lessons: Adventures with Knife and Corkscrew.
More great travel reading:
Jeffrey Greene French Spirits: A House, a Village, and...
Edmund Mullins The Pilgrimage to Santiago,
part of the Lost and Found Series from Signal Books.
Ann Barry At Home in
France
Lawrence Wylie Village in the
Vaucluse
Eleanor Clark The Oysters of
Locmariaquer
M.F.K.Fisher
Two Towns in
Provence
William Wharton Houseboat on
the Seine
Erasmus Kloman Sojourn in
Gascony
Ernest Hemingway A Moveable
Feast
Richard Goodman
French Dirt:
The Story of a Garden in...
