Paris

I took this book with me on a month-long architecture study trip to Paris this summer. I started reading it before the trip, and found it very dry and badly written (I have a B.A. in History, so I've read my share of dry texts!). I hoped that being in Paris would enliven the book. That didn't happen; Paris itself only highlighted the deficiencies in the book, the most glaring of which being the complete omission of the city's pre-Roman, Roman, and early Middle Ages history. (Saint-Chapelle is not in there at all!) In lieu of this, Sutcliffe spends an inordinate amount of documenting the development of the distinctive hotel-style residences in the city. There are the obligatory bits on Haussman and the Pompidou Center, but both - particularly the latter - are so opinionated that it made me question the credibility of the entire book. At the end of the trip, I left my copy behind in my dorm room. Au revoir!

Unfortunately, I haven't found a good Paris architectural history to recommend instead of this one. If you're in the city and want a good, well-illustrated book on the development of early city (pre-Roman through the Middle Ages), pick up the exhibition catalogue at the archeological museum under the plaza in front of Notre-Dame.

It is very easy to read, but is incomplete, and leaves many holes. I feel like it starts really interesting points and then stops talking about them

This is without a doubt the best book I've found yet on Parisian architectural history. Sutcliffe has done an incredible job of merging discussion of the architectural features of Parisian buildings and monuments with the historical context that influenced (and was influenced by) them.

If you have ever been fascinated by the spectacular buildings, monuments, and boulevards of Paris, this book will be a treat. After reading this book, Paris seemed like a totally new city to me. Apartment rows that I'd previously not even noticed suddenly took on meaning and importance for me. The larger patterns of the city became clear to me. And I felt a physical link with the history of Paris.

I loved Sutcliffe's writing style, mixing humor with information and sharing his personal opinion of buildings with the historical facts. I also enjoyed the insights on the social atmospheres and values of each timeperiod and how they influenced the way in which the structures were built and what the public reaction to them was at the time.

I have many books on Parisian architecture, but this is the one that I always come back to and read over and over...

I typically enjoy SF books, but this is one is quite weak. Time travel is a tricky subject, many paradoxes are possible, which are largely ignored in book. The German phrases that are scattered through the book (funny that there are very few French phrases, it is after all in Paris, even though occupied by the Nazis) are all grammatically incorrect and seem to be taken straight from Hogan's Heroes.

I felt the characters in this novel were weak and shallow. There were also so many "ifs" in this book, I mean I can understand one miracle, but there were a lot of I beamed (which sounded a little "trekky" to me) out at the last second for it to seem plausible.

I'm constantly looking for time travel books that don't blantantly ignore paradoxes. This one doesn't, and moreover offers the new concept of "metatime" which I believe, has something to do with how fast a time distortion set off in the past, will reach the future. Really enjoyed it, and can't wait to read Time Station London! Only one book I've read on time travel is better: Gerrold's "The man who folded himself".

ACCESS IN PARIS was avidly studied before trip, but alot of information was terribly out of date (book was published in 1993). It was better than nothing, but not by much.

This is an excellent travel guide for anyone having mobility problems. I know of no other guide like it. I run a disability travel hotline at Moss Rehab Hospital and recommend this book frequently.

What a subject! What a terrible book!

At first I thought it was a bad translation. But no, the French version is just as disjointed, poorly edited and nearly unreadable as the English version.

just two examples from among the many:
1: Franck recounts an auction, noting that Picasso kept his silence throughout the auction. We later learn that Picasso wasn't there... so, did he keep quiet? or did he stay away?

2: We get a detailed account of Arthur Cravan's boxing exhibition with Jack Johnson, after which, Mr. Frank notes: "Jack Johnson never stepped into the ring again." Of course, he meant Cravan, but that"s not what he said. In fact, the entire book is like that.

An author, by the way, is responsible for reading own proofs, so the faults of editing are the faults of the author.....

As I said the topic is fantatic, and when I could sift through the author's drivel, I found it interesting, though he probably provides more information about Solomon and Max Jacob than I would like and not enough about some of Picasso's mistresses, which I think would have been interesting...

Ah, Franck est francais... what else can i say??

Part fiction, part art history, Bohemian Paris is a fascinating read. How can it be otherwise when the pages are inhabited by such colorful figures as Picasso. Modigliani, Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein?

Franck, the author of 15 books, escorts readers on a wide-screen tour of magical Paris during a period of 30 years, 1900 - 1930. That was a time of new birth in the world of artistic creation when painters, sculptors, writers, and versifiers struggled to covey revolutionary ideas and images. Some of these creators were feted at opulent, devil-may care galas while others worked in the direst poverty.

Learned and repressed poet Guillaume Apollinaire hovered on the periphery of this circle; Jean Cocteau might trip a friend to advance himself but how brilliant he was! Amedeo Modigliani gave to others when he had naught for himself; Gertrude Stein presided over her unparalleled salons.

And from these minds and from that time sprang cubism, Fauvism, dadaism and surrealism. Paris, both public and private, sizzled with creativity.

With Bohemian Paris author Franck has painted vivid word pictures of that significant era and collected numerous vignettes about the private lives of those who dramatically influenced art as we now know it.

- Gail Cooke

This book is extremely DARK.

While I absolutely LOVE multi-cultural books and am raising my daughter with cultural and racial awareness and sensitivity, I cannot recommend this book AT ALL. I picked it up, as I liked the title and thought my daughter would like to hear/read a children's story from France.

Unfortunately, this is one of the worst books I have ever seen. I feel compelled to warn others about it. While it does indeed delve into cultural diversity, it goes WAY TOO FAR! It talks about World War I and II, using adult words, such as "renaissance", "nazi", "infantry", and "exterminated". And, do you really think the subject of jews being exterminated is an appropriate topic for children, ages 4 - 9? Or illustrations of soldiers holding jews at gunpoint? NOT!

And, an editorial side note (I'm an editor), the story hops around from city to city (Paris, Vienna, Champagne, Harlem, Germany, etc.) and it's hard for young children to understand the difference of these places, unless they have been there themselves. There were WAY too many details for children of those ages to follow and understand.

It's just an absolutely APPALLING book. What a shame; the writer had a good idea but went on to create a literary disaster with it.

Bonjour Lonnie by Faith Ringgold is a fable based in realism, filled with the beautifully imaginative images of the artist and author. Lonnie is an orphan who follows a magical Love Bird to Paris, where he discovers his family history. He finds out that he is African American, French and Jewish and that his life mirrors some of the most significant events of the 20th century. His heritage has been molded by the World War I Harlem Hell Fighters Troop, the Harlem Renaissance, the African American experience in Paris, the Holocaust and an escape to America. Readers will be happy to follow Lonnie's adventures to a home and family of his own.

This book is unique in that it weaves serious content into a children's book in a most appropriate way. Important issues are presented for children to consider, question and explore with the guidance of parents and teachers. How refreshing it is to find a book that is not afraid to include "real life" content. Today's students are multi-racial, multi -lingual and certainly multi-cultural. It's high time that our children can enjoy and be challenged by a book like Bonjour Lonnie.

these were not good stories and i did not like them.

Well bound in bonded leather, the paper quality is also good. The yellow coloured pages you'll see if purchasing second-hand were an intentional affectation to give it the appearance of age. The binding has lasted well and the book can be fully opened out without any effect on the spine.

As you'd expect, cramming the complete works of Dickens into 2500 pages (even large sized ones) means the font size is small, around 8 point. People with bad eyesight will definitely need a magnifying glass. It's tolerable for everyone else.

This book isn't really a good buy for boys under 13. Not because of any profanity, etc, but, the novels are in the main very long and perhaps a bit too requiring of concentration. However, I'd highly recommend buying a copy just in case they can. Dickens rewards his readers well for the effort they put in.

Country of Cold is a short story collection that suffers from the identity crisis of trying to be a novel. It features the same cast of characters who interact with each other over the course of the book. I have read books built on the same mode and they seem to be attempts by writers who do not feel confident enough in either the novel or short story mode to commit to either. Consequently, works like this suffer from the weaknesses of both genres with the strength of neither. I only remember some of the stories vaguely, even though I finished this book 2 days ago. I know most of them were about people struggling against their lives and the burden of it, but the stories are so busy tying into each other that they are hard-pressed to stand alone as works of art or in the memory.

Patterson introduces characters in one story only to be forgotten about until a hundred pages later by which time the supposed impact of a revealed secret about them holds no power because you no longer remember anything about the character. To me, the best stories in the "collection", or "novel", or whatever it is, were the ones where Patterson writes in the style of a cold-blooded scientist as in the story "Insomnia, Infidelity, and the Leopard Seal". Patterson, who was a doctor in the Canadian Army describes all 3 mentioned in the above title and ties them into a profound view of life. As a writer, Patterson has potential, but Country of Cold should be read as a stepping stone or an introduction instead of an important contribution.

I read 'Country of Cold' because I enjoyed the author's south sea travel memoir 'The Water in Between'. I have to say that I was disappointed with this collection of short stories and I felt that my having read his memoir compounded this.

This book is a collection of 'connected' short stories, a description I always find a little worrisome as it usually means a novel that didn't hang together or an author with a limited literary imagination, but as I liked his previous non-fiction book I thought it would be a worthwhile read. Halfway through I had the feeling that this was initially meant to be a novel in that the characters and plots seemed to be recycled throughout the stories. An example of this is that two characters in different stories (Cora and Daphne) both come from the same high-school, go to medical school, then on to work in Montreal before both coming back to Manitoba. (Rarely does any pair- outside of conjoined twins or single fictional characters that have been conveniently split into two- have such identical paths). Another criticism I have is that numerous events presented in Patterson's memoir are recounted and represented now as fiction (Interposition, Starlight, Starbright), and for me, the stories suffered because of it. (This isn't the author's problem of course, but my problem. In a way it's a compliment that Patterson is a more compelling character than any of his fictional creations).

The characters, all graduates of Dunsmuir High, lack a diversity one expects from a writer of Patterson's skill. They run through the interesting, but fairly narrow permutations of medical school, military service and work in the north of Canada (sometimes all three, a hat-trick scored by the author himself, and expounded upon in his memoir). An odd and recurring manifestation of this was that characters who were doctors or military personnel never had their physical attributes disparagingly described but other characters- a waitress 'with a nose that could split pack ice' (in 'Gabriella: Parts 1 and 2'), a bartender 'with a profile like an engorged chigger' (in 'Les is More') or a disappointing husband 'long since grown fat and white like Oreo cookie filling' (in 'Boatbuilding')- all had a harsher light cast on them. When the protagonist doesn't have the good luck to have lived through what Patterson has, as in the lovesick and obese bartender in 'Les is More', the characterization suffers and in its place we get antics: a barrel is produced and the outsider strapped into to it for a ride over a waterfall. I suppose that's what irked me about the collection; that certain characters were rendered with less dignity (not as less dignified, an important difference) if they fell outside certain boundaries. Patterson seems to save his respect for the ennui of his medical or military officer characters or for the landscape itself; everyone else- like the beach-goers he derides in the title story- has an 'L' firmly tattooed on their forehead:

"It was an astonishing place, and for all the regrettable fashion decisions and aesthetic failings, the scale of the forest still dwarfed the beet-faced people at its southern tip."

A low point is when several Inuit characters wander into Patterson's sights to make cameo appearances in the title story, where they are promptly subjected (in a span of ten pages!) to near-freezing in a blizzard, third degree burns from a tent fire, a botched medical procedure and a suicide by gun shot. I guess they should have joined the military. All of this mayhem is, of course, back-story to make us understand why the story's protagonist, a doctor who has worked in the north, is unable to 'get on' with her life. Poor dear.

Certain stories, like 'The Perseid Shower' are quite good, showing that an exotic locale or a character intoxicated by boredom isn't a necessary feature of his work. The writing is the strongest when Patterson describes places, but even that has its limitations. The arctic is barren and vast and yes, I can imagine people are lonely there, but it doesn't mean that every story needs its mandatory blinding blizzard, dense cloud of mosquitoes, or night of exquisite starlight. We get it.

The collection ends with its weakest story 'Manitoba Avenue', a piecing-together of the various storylines as the characters meet at their class reunion (which is, if possible, more derivative than it sounds).

All of this is a shame because Kevin Patterson is a very good writer who brings a great deal of intelligence into his work, and I had the feeling after finishing the book that I wanted to read more from him, but non-fiction. When he isn't writing about himself or people like him he lapses into disdainful characterization that boarders on arrogance. At least in non-fiction such attitudes (which he has every right to hold) are more honestly expressed.

We took the 2001 edition to Paris with our 5 and 10 year old boys this fall. Critical information was inaccurate and many of the descriptions were overblown puffery.

Inaccuracies: the text indicated the Cite des Sciences at Porte de la Villette is open on Mondays. It took us nearly an hour to get there, only to find it closed. It took another hour to get back to the city center, a waste of an entire morning, with hugely disappointed kids. Another: metro stops listed in the text were incorrect - in one case, the indicated stop was in a different arrondissement entirely from the destination.

Overblown prose: au Nain Bleu, a toy store, highlighted as the oldest, biggest and greatest toy store in Paris, is smaller by half than any of the major department store toy sections, and carries a smaller selection of the same toys one can find elsewhere at much higher prices. The Centre des Mers et Oceans (an aquarium) is tiny, amateurish and entirely underwhelming. Aquaboulevard (a water park) is OK but hardly fantastic by North American standards - certainly not equal to the impression given the gushing text ("a water wonderland").

And, Aquaboulevard requires that all swimmers wear speedo-type suits: a critical fact not mentioned in the text. Didn't find this out until trekking all the way across town with the two kids, changing metros twice, hiking from the closest metro stop to the water park across busy big streets in pouring rain, and had paid 40 euros of non-refundable admission fee, changed, and started to enter the pool wearing our surfer-style swim suits. Then we were kicked out. It's big fun telling a 5 year old he can't swim at a water park after he's been looking forward to it for days.

Paris is a wonderful place to bring kids. There are lots of things to do and to see. This book did not help us - worse, we wasted lots of time and more than a few euros following its suggestions.

I disagree with Richard's review of this book.

We went to Paris with children aged 10 and 12 in June 2003. We found the book very useful as an inspiration as to where we might go.

As when we use any guide book, we verified the information locally before setting out on a trek. For example we did go to Aquaboulevarde and we knew in advance about the speedo rule. If you rely on one source only you are very likely to get caught out. Information changes. There is only so much detail that can be included.

I strongly recommend it as portable and useful for a children's focus on the Paris sights.

My family used this guide in Paris recently and found most of the locations for restaurants and to be at least five years old - especially the budget ones. On a number to occasions, we located the street address only to be told by the new owners that the restaurant has not been in existence for a number of years. It remains amazing to us that Frommer a very well know guide publisher in the West and Paris being an important distination, would not keep this volune up-to-date. We ended up wasted a lot of time literary searching deadends, before disposing of this book and taking the kids to the nearest McDonald for lunch instead. I suggest looking at Foder guides instead, they are several notches above.

My husband and I were in Paris in April 2000 and this book was all we needed. We found a very cheap hotel ($ 40.00 for 2 people), booked it before we left and found everything as described in the travel guide. We had no problems finding the restaurants we wanted to go to. Overall, a great guide for people who want to travel cheap, but nice. And--we found it to be up to date. If you go to Paris, don't miss the catacombes!

Derrida here engages in his usual word-games and cute metaphores, and the result is pointless and nearly incomprehensible, as usual. How exactly is human knowledge furthered in a positive and valuable way by saying things like "The title of the text is the title (without title) of the text"? Nothing but meaningless verbiage...

If there could be such a thing as a text that 'exemplifies' Derrida's thought, one that meticulously and clearly explains the strategies of 'deconstruction' (I hate the word!), while at the same time distilling not just its own theory, but also producing a critical reading of several other prominent thinkers and their texts (and one that of course demonstrates the practical ends of the exposé of his theory), then "Given Time" ("Donner le temps") would unequivocally be that book. It is that good. In fact, it is superb. For those who have read Derrida's texts of the late 60s and early 70s, and know where they stand regarding Derrida's ideas, this book acts like a kind of overview or survey of his thought, a matrix or map of his thought, an architectural plan, even a game plan.

The primary text is a story by Baudelaire, and Derrida uses this two-page story to explicate the relations he has with his own masters, the lessons learned and the major points that he has taken from them and transformed. Husserl on the notion of the gift and the necessity to zigzag (a "mouvement en vrille") amongst bound idealities; Heidegger on being and temporality and the impossibility of appropriation or presence; Bataille on excess. All through a refreshing reading of Baudelaire's story together with Mauss' seminal essay from 1923 "The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies" (often considered the most influential work of anthropology, focusing on the social customs of exchange and the obligation to reciprocate) which conceives of a total social fact of gifting that Bataille had himself begun to unhinge in his 1949 "The Accursed Share" by implicitly laying waste to Hegel's philosophical economy -- a multivolume work that was itself greatly influenced by "The Gift."

From a map of thought to Derrida's Joycean world
"Given Time" is a brief treatise on the layered notions of the 'gift' in several important works (in Husserl, it means what is given to us in the world through the 'immediate experience' of our senses, and that separates intention from what is given). Derrida's thesis is that giving is only possible through a splintered 'time' of originary difference, which produces a doubling-effect of the notion of the 'origin,' and which means that the only possibility of authenticity will always be that of inauthenticity, which doubles and splits the difference. In other words, contamination occurs between the concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity: authenticity is impossible without the possibility of inauthenticity. Much like all 'counterfeit money' (which is also the title of Baudelaire's story) you can't tell whether the coin is or isn't truly money that you can buy a commodity with and truly possess something. Is it or isn't it fake? It's a split decision that Derrida patiently explores the 'logic' of. (By the way, art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has written a wonderful book, "Phasmes" (1990), on deception and pretending.) This important concept, which also runs throughout Deleuze's work, is a term he calls "the power of the false." But to give credit where it is due, it comes first of all in Heidegger's critique of his own project of a fundamental ontology (very arguably, to my mind) in Section 72 of "The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics," where he speaks of the assertive logos as "false," "deceptive," and "pretending," and discusses the as-structure that will be so crucial for all of Derrida's work -- in fact his explication of the true/false pair in "Given Time" explains this operative concept of 'relation' without naming it. 'Relation' is probably the most important concept in Derrida's thought, and he explicates it at length in "Given Time." Derrida shows how there is indeed a beyond to the binary couple of truth and falsity, authenticity and inauthenticity, by exploring a catachresis that simultaneously surpasses each of them (suggesting that they are impossibly pure concepts, as each implies the other as its limit) but that also makes their 'false' opposition possible (and that they must therefore mix or contaminate each other). Derrida has given many strategic names to this notion, such as originary difference or différance. This relation of possibility to impossibility is very clearly laid out in "Given Time," even numbered ("on one hand"...."on the other hand"), and gives the reader a penetrating insight into the importance that Derrida ascribes here and throughout his work -- especially his more recent works "Aporias" (another very clear book of his, and highly recommended), "The Politics of Friendship" and "Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness" -- to the counter-intuitive and non-oppositional relationship between impossibility and possibility (which is an important redrawing of Kant's condition of possibility and the notion of 'limit' and critique).

Also, one can read the entire book as a long commentary on capitalism, one which places Marxian thinkers in an uncomfortable position and that tries to think through capitalism a little bit further from within 'deconstruction': Derrida's most overt attempts at this are 'From restrictive to general economy' of 1966 (a superb essay with a very pretentious title that plays on Einstein's 1905 Nobel-prize earning work "Special [aka "Restricted"] and General Theory of Relativity" -- although his 1921 Nobel was technically awarded for his "contribution to photoelectrics") and "Specters of Marx," from 1994, with a title that's cribbed from his mentor and colleague Louis Althusser's book "Specters of Hegel" as an hommage. One also has to remember that this book was originally a lecture course from c. 1979. Derrida is of course using transcendental phenomenology as the guiding thread to discuss literature and sociology, and makes something really interesting occur in each, along with modifying our concept of capitalism. From anywhere you stand you can see Derrida's French qualities: literature, anthropology, the belief that philosophy has to engage with capitalism if it is to be considered at all relevant. All are relevant to deconstruction, and are considered game for being folded into it, so long as they take you somewhere else, produce different thoughts regarding the world we inhabit, and permit these thoughts to be formalized.

There is no other book written by Derrida that lays out the material and the method so clearly and patiently (although again, "Aporias" is highly recommended). It does assume familiarity with his earliest programmatic works, but what philosopher wants to repeat themselves all the time (excepting Heidegger of course. oops. cat's out of the bag)?

As to the translation, it was wonderfully done by Peggy Kamuf, and it is very likely the best translation of any of Derrida's work into English. It is quite simply a pearl. It should have won her an award, but America doesn't acknowledge translators as well as it could.

Take what you need from the above and leave the rest -- just some thoughts on what is so far Derrida's most elegant and accessible treatise on his own philosophy, and a book that thoroughly transforms the interrelated concepts of the gift that exist in separate disciplines.