Paris

Well I dont like Parisians all that much, but I must admit that the city of lights is hard to beat when it comes down to rating a place based on sheer beauty. Its a scene-stealer. Took the by night map of paris because it says that they tell you where to kiss on the most romantic bridge. Well I think Ponte Marie must be up there as one of the top ten bridges in the world on which to cuddle with a loved one! Look for the heart logos on the map and you'll know what I mean. Thanks. Enjoyed reading thew map.

pretty funky - colorful, fun. not a typical map in that they really keep it simple. major streets, places are shown on map with logos and symbols. easy to understand.

I really enjoyed reading this map. The writing is funny and to the point and above all honest. I have been to Paris quite a few times and this was the first 'fun' map that made the city look small and intimate which it isnt. It can be really intimidating esp. if you dotn speak French!(like me) Best part was the romantic rating guide and the 'more groovy stuff' section. Thanks guys!

"The Historic Restaurants of Paris" is a fun guide to read. Did you know that the Tour d'Argent serves each duck with a numbered tag, a tradition that began in 1890? I wonder what numbers Balzac and Napoleon had?

Each restau has a brief two-page description (this is a little book, smaller than a paperback novel) and there are about 100 establishments described. The data include the address, phone, Metro, and hours. The book is organized by arrondiseement, and there's an alphabetical index; an appendix organizes them by type (luxury, cafes, inexpensive, etc.).

Don't expect restaurant reviews, the author rarely even hints that certain places aren't worth the prices they charge. This book is more about the history and trivia of each of these charming places. Using only this book to select restaurants, I ran into some surprises, bad and good.

If your French is good, call ahead. If not, ask the hotel reception to call for you. (In the US we have concierges; in French hotels, it's everyone's job to be helpful.) Gents, take a tie, it'll get you a better table. And be advised, the French idea of "non-smoking" is laughable.

If you're into art history, this book is a good companion to "The Impressionist's Paris," by the same author.

Bon Appetit!

I read Ellen Williams's book about the Impressionists, and her charming prose and wealth of historical anecdotes made 19th-century Paris come alive in a way I've never before encountered in a travel guide. This book is great, too. I took it with me on a recent trip to Europe, and had a chance to sample several of the food shops she mentions. What a pleasure to learn all about them beforehand--it made the experience so much more authentic!

My recent trip to Paris wouldn't have been half as much fun without this beautiful guide. It took me to restaurants and shops I never would have found on my own. I can't wait to go back -- with this book, of course.

Kat Tracking Through Paris is a bare bones no frills guide to Black Paris. There are no glossy pictures or maps which is one of its flaws. The information is direct and to the point, with little narration by Ms. Kat herself. Although Kat does list the major black haunts and hang-outs of Black Paris, the book seems cold and impersonal. Other than the little introduction by Ms. Kat at the beginning of the book, there is little narration throughout the rest of the book. On a good note, I did like the book because Ms. Kat's directions to all of the hotels, restaurants, and clubs listed are precise and to the point.

Before I first went to Paris in July of 2002, I tracked this book down. I was sooo glad I was able to get this book, because it was my own personal information guide. I meet some wonderful people and had some great experiences in Paris at places I would have never known to go to if it were not for Kat. I went back again in October 2002 with my trusty pocket sized tour guide. Once again, Kats directions and recommendation are right on point. Thanks Kat, for giving me life long memories. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who plans to take a trip to Paris. Make sure you check out Percy's Place and BoJangles, great food, funky fun!!!

I have not traveled to Paris yet and never really got excited about going. After reading Kat's book, it has opened my eyes to wanting to go and see all of the exciting places as described in her book. For people that don't travel, we need a little push and what better than to read a book based on her true to life experiences in her travels. Well, that's good enough for me. I'm going to Paris next year - with Ms. Kat.

This book is a great introduction to what you will stumble upon in Paris. There is so much to see and do and this book categorizes it convenietely for travelers.

The many details are very helpful for travelers and instructions on how to get out of the airport! Everything is just about accurate and said in plain English. It's great because it's not like the Parisians will help you get out of the airport and around teh city. A Travel book is very necessary.

Two complaints: 1) In a lot of parts of the book it says certain places are dangerous or certain metro stops were dangerous. Although I think it's good to know place that are bad in town, I think the book was being a bit too protective. I went around many of those stops without problems.

Also the maps! A more detailed metro and bus map would be a great complement. In Paris we didn't look at this book much, but had to use another book for a detailed metro map!

I traveled to Paris with my wife and kids for New Year's Eve 2002 and this little book never left our side. I really liked the price ratings for restaurants, the maps, the metro (subway) guide, the little tid bits of information for the different districts, the layout of the chapters (sights, museums, nightlife, shopping)... I could go on and on. The book came back dog-eared, underlined and highlighted after one week there. I plan to go back and it is definately coming along again.

this is the most informative guidebook to paris i've ever come across! i've been there numerous times, and there is no book that gives more of an "insider's view" of this beautiful city. don't hesitate to go out and buy this one--it's a keeper!

gorgeously dark words of magic and vision. Unlike anything else.

Charles Baudelaire, in his Little Poems in Prose--at least in this translation, I may say--, speaks as if he were thrown into a wind of excitement and enthusiasm in one whirl of experience, and then, no sooner does he do so, that he is ready to move on, and experience something else.

I find thst this book is published no where else at this present time, than through the Teitan Press; Crowley has some poems in translation of Baudelaire in his Collected Works, but this present edition (Little Poems in Prose) is all in prose. Thus, it is contained no where else, as yet.

Baudelaire's Petite Poèmes en prose was published posthumously in 1869 and was later, as intended by the author, entitled Le Spleen de Paris. Baudelaire did not live long enough to bring these poems together in a single volume, but it is clear from his correspondence that the work he envisaged was both a continuation of, and a radical departure from, Les Fleurs du mal.

Some of the texts may be regarded as authentic poems in prose, while others are closer to exquisite miniature prose narratives. The setting is primarily urban, with the focus on crowds and the suffering lives they contain: a broken-down street acrobat (Le Vieux Satimbanque), a hapless street trader (Le Mauvais Vitrier), the poor staring at the wealthy in their opulent cafés (Le Vieux des pauvres), the deranged (Mademoisele Bistouri) and the derelict (Assommons les pauvres!), and, in the final text (Les Bon Chiens), the pariah dogs that scurry and scavenge through the streets of Brussels.

Not only is the subject matter of the prose poems essentially urban, but the form itself, "musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato," is said to derive from "frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections."

In its deliberate fragmentation and its merging of the lyrical with the sardonic, Le Spleen de Paris may be regarded as one of the earliest and most successful examples of a specifically urban writing, the textual equivalent of the city scenes of the Impressionists, embodying in its poetics of sudden and disorienting encounter that ambiguous "heroism of modern life" that Baudelaire celebrated in his art criticism.

This book was not as good as the first Marie book. It was ok, though, nothing really great however. I reccomend the first one more.

Mystery At the Paris Ballet was just as good as the first Marie book! I liked it!

At last Marie has realized her dream of dancing with the famed paris opera, but life at the ballet is not all she imagined it would be. the other dancers in the corps de ballet,jealous of her talent, tease her about her youth and inexperience. her long hours of practice leave her little time for her best friend,joelle. Her wealthypatron,Countess du lac, gives her lavish gifts, but it is difficult for marie to accept the Countesses extravagance while people struggle to provide for their families and poor children beg for food in the streets of paris.

In a world where all too many girls' books are subtly anti-feminist, Minou is a parable for girls, both pre-reading and early reading age, that teaches the joys and pride of self sufficiency.

Girls readily identify with cats, dancers, artists, horses, and fairy tale heroines, and Minou is readily the first and the last -- but without the saccharine "Prince Charming" and his sweeping away to "Ever After" Land. Every girl I have read this book to, or read with has identified easily with Minou, and agreed that self sufficiency is far superior to dependency.

Maeno's illustrations are gorgeous, and as the "mother" of a small siamese, incredibly accurate in description and depiction.

The ending is not, as a previous reviewer stated, perfect, but it is an independent happy ending, and that alone makes this worth 4 stars.

All three of my children, ages 2, 6, and 8, huddled around to hear this entire story! (How often does THAT happen?) The illustrations are simply beautiful, and in fact inspired my 6-year-old to experiment with more shades of color in his drawings, "like an artist." The story is intriguing, keeping my savvy 8-year-old interested to the end. We live in Paris now, so there was heightened interest to see familiar sights pictured in the story. Minou learns a valuable lesson. At the end of the story, however, I felt the message was somewhat forced. Still, I plan to give this book as Christmas gifts to all the cousins back in the U.S.A!

Mindy Bingham

Minou

THIS BOOK IS VERY CUTE. i REALLY WISH i COULD HAVE I SO I COULD READ MORE TIMES. THIS BOOK IS A BOOK THAT A TEACHER RECCOMENDED TO ME IF IT WOULDNT BEEN BY THAT TEACHER I WOULDNT BE DOING THIS REVIEW. READ IT !

For researchers of the period when romantic love was being invented in spite of a period of brutality and passionate Crusading, this gives some insight into the life and times of an ordinary point of view. The language could be richer and a sense of the history deeper, but I still found my used version of this which I got from Amazon a worthwhile addition to my research.

Tons of citations, tons of primary-source documentation. It's a gorgeous book, full of information about life in a very specific time-period. This isn't a general "medieval" resource -- it is a resource about London and Paris of the years 1150-1200 and that.. is.. it. I wish it went into more detail in places (such as how women lived), but one can't argue that it's probably the best book of its kind concerning this time period. There are recipes, instructions for planting gardens, herbalism and medicine notes, information on how ironsmiths and goldsmiths worked, architectural notes, and loads of tidbits about how students lived (since the book's primary source is a 12th-century student's writings), stuff about jousts.. you name it, just about. The author sounds like he might have lived there, he's so familiar with his material. Effortlessly, he spins his stories, and his writing style is quite pleasant to read. I'd certainly and without reservations consider this book a must-have for anybody interested in this time period. I just wonder that it took me so long to find it -- it was written in the 50s!

This book also comes out in softcover from Wisconsin Press and is currently in print.

To most modern people, Europe's Middle Ages consisted of jousting tournaments of knights, damsels in conical headgear awaiting rescue, and Arthur's Round Table. In fact, specific details of life for peasants, artisans, and even kings in the so-called Dark Ages from the 9th to the 15th centuries are relatively few, scarcer by far than those culled from the Athens of Pericles or the Rome of the Caesars. Of seeming necessity, most books about life in the days between Charlemagne and Henry VIII present facts about European life in the 9th century alongside details of life in the 14th, a method that is about as reliable as discussing commoners and lords in the reign of Elizabeth I by using anecdotes about France under Napoleon. Daily Living in the Twelfth Century by Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. is a rare exception to this situation. It is an account of what Alexander Neckam, a cleric from Dunstable, England saw and experienced in the months of 1177-78 on a journey to Paris where he would study and teach for a number of years. While the author's technique is novelistic, he draws on materials dating from the time, notably observations written by Neckam himself. In the narrative, Neckam travels from Dunstble, 34 miles northwest of London, through that great bustling capital, and on to Dover where he sets sail across the channel and traverses crumbling Roman roads, visits minor barons, and copes with student housing in the great city of Paris. Holmes artfully weaves in details from water porters to straw-covered floors, presenting a you-are-there sensory experience that illuminates Neckam's bond with the modern reader as much as it illustrates their differences.

I am a fan of Lonely Planet and used the Paris Condensed guide for my last trip. The good thing: it realy fits in your pocket and the street maps are ok. We picked a hotel from the recommended list and liked it. On the other side: It is so condensed that it just gives you a very rough overview of the major attractions. For someone who has never heard of Paris and just goes there for one day, it is good. However if you want to sit down in a cafe and find out just a little bit about the history of a monument or which parts of a museum are containing what, then this book is not for you. Next time I'll go back, I will get the normal version of the Lonely Planet City Guide.

This is the perfect guidebook. Yes, it is small and doesn't have all the info in on history or details of places, but that's what makes it so great. Fits in the back pocket and very easy to read when you're on the Metro or walking the streets. It might be a good idea to have a more detailed guidebook for history lessons on the great places in Paris, but for basic info and directions - this is the book for you...

Paris: Condensed has (almost) EVERYTHING I've always wanted and looked for in a guidebook: fits in my pocket; wonderful, well laid out graphic design; useful, concise information on sites both large and small; excellent fold-out maps that stay attached to the book (and aren't embarassing to have to open up out in public); great listings of shops, restaurants and lodging. The only thing they missed out on was an index of street names for the maps (I still give it 5 stars, though).

In short, you get everything you'd possibly need (except the aforementioned street index) when out and about in a very slick, user-friendly package. I eagerly await expansion of this series!

Although my daughter and I love Madeline, this particular book was disturbing. Miss Clavel buys Pepito some tools to give him "an outlet for his energy" and he builds a guillotine to decapitate chickens! He turns a cat loose in the midst of a pack of dogs and is then attacked by the dogs, resulting in a visit from the doctor. In the end, of course, Pepito changes his ways. But it in no way compensated for the fact that the majority of the story was, at best, dark. I don't tend to be faint of heart when it comes to literature, but this was not appropriate for my 4-year-old.

Pepito, the boy in this book has a change of heart and goes from being unkind to animals to caring for them. It is a good story. As far as it being "dark" as another reviewer said,well,does that reader eat chickens? That's what Pepito was doing before he learned a new way to live with the animals he came to love.

My daughter and I really loved this book! The rhythm of this Madeline book is especially good. It highlights Madeline's courageous, assertive personality as well as her compassionate intuition! A great match with the Madeline movie with Hatty Jones with follows a similiar plot line and is also a family favorite. Enjoy!