Paris

Nearly evenything in this book reads like rehashes of uninspired Paris tourist brochures. Even the three hatchet jobs contributed by Jan Morris and Herbert Gold (the insufferable, execrable, and virtually unreadable Gold contributed two) are derivative and unoriginal instead of witty and daring, as they were, no doubt, intended.

Apparently it is virtually impossible to see Paris with one's own eyes. At least if you're an Anglo-Saxon foreigner. Major portions of the city have been, effectively, laminated and generously greased by the native French so as to slide foreign tourists through, and out, with the minimum of muss and fuss.

And the editors seem to think that by excluding any significant mention of the Eiffel Tower that they are providing a novel and fresh take on Paris. But this constitutes a very feeble effort, at best.

And apart from all the airy-fairy poetical musings that travel seem to provoke in travel writers, Paris also fills writers with cloying smugness. As the most extreme example, the one selection I could not finish was by someone called Lawrence Osborne, and it described Turkish baths. His mentioning of a "veritginous loss of toxicity" in the first, very long, paragragh was the last straw for me.

On the upside, there are one or two glimmers of humanity and immediate, unpretentious life in these selections. But not nearly enough to justify ploughing through all 300 pages.

i have enjoyed many of the travelers' tales books and the paris edition was no exception. it is a great companion to a regular old run-of-the-mill guidebook if you're preparing for trip to france.

This book appears in one scene of David Lynch's movie "Mulholland Drive" (2001)

This book is a somewhat anachronistic Marxist interpretation of Impressionist and Post-Impressionistic French painting on the basis of the old-fashined Base-Superstructure model. The author strives to prove that the Impressionits' concentration on landscape and private life painting was, above all, a kind of bourgeois whitewashing of the recent events of the Paris Commune. This would make the book too much one-sided, were it not for the author's later remarks on Seurat's paintings, that allow him to fully grasp the fact that the pseudo-organic character of these pointillist paintings reflect, more than bourgeois fear of a renewed Commune, the self-confidence of a sucessful bourgeoisie in creating an stable social order based on individualism and private accomplishements.

Guide Bleu Paris & Versailles is a sound initiative. Versailles is such a world in itself. So different from Paris in all ways that we could not consider the tiny chapter about Versailles in most Paris guides was enough. Guide Bleu are well known for their sound expertise, their rigourous, systematic approach of monuments. So don't be surprised if you feel like partipating in some kind of surgerical discovery of the most visited palace in the world. Rooms 1, 2, 3, .... You will find a description of each single visitable room in castle of Versailles. Gardens are also well described. If you planned to spend at least one day in Versailles (worth it!) then this guide will be quite helpful. You will consider it as reference book when you will be back home. French readers consider Blue Guide books as reference books as if they were history manuals. Paris monuments are also well described even if no book would be big enough to cover all aspects of parisian life and landscapes. Consider this buy as appropriate if you love history and are serious about tourism.

After a steady diet of Dick Francis, one cannot help but be dissapointed in "A Comediane Dies." Unfair, I know, to always judge one author by another, but Brett's characters are simpler, less sympathetic, and generally less intriguing. Moreover, the plot was more predictable than the best of the mystery genre. Certainly it would be boring to read a mystery in which the detective homed directly in on the guilty party, never wavering in his certainty or following false paths. But at the same time, every mystery author knows this, and therefore their readers intuitively know that neither the first, nor the second or usually even the third will turn out to be whodunnit. Read 5 or 7 of the genre and you start to suspect only the least suspectible. The excellent writer, however, will pepper his plot with enough entirely unsuspectible characters to keep the reader both distracted and guessing. Unfortunately, Brett does not, and neither his characters nor his settings are interesting enough to make up for it. The saving grace of the book, if there is one, is the rather adroit and amusingly barbed commentary on the English theatrical and television scene. The pure British wit displayed in these discourses is almost enough to keep the book going - although not, I'm afraid, enough to tempt me to others in his series.

Apparently "Dora Bruder" is the only novel by Patick Modiano available on your site. It's too bad because it's not, by far, his best book. If you haven't tried this author before you won't be too disappointed. Otherwise you'll probably have the feelind of reading something you've read before ! Anyway Modiano is a very good French writer. He's furthermore very easy to read in French. If you are interested, I would recommend "Rue des boutiques obscures" or the very poetic "Dimanches d'Aout" (sorry I don't know the their title in English).

I was disappointed in this book although Michael Sadler has an impressive knowledge of France, French and the French and parts of the book are undoubtedly funny. Still, I felt the humor was too deliberate and over-the-top for my taste, not to mention a bit on the crude side. A heartfelt francophile, Mr. Sadler tracks a year-long sabbatical spent in Paris with the primary focuses of the book being his quest to bed a married Frenchwoman and his association with a neighborhood group of men who hang out at the local bar and periodically indulge in semi-clandestine meals consisting of unusual French dishes (pig ears, bull testicles, etc.). If the story about the married woman is to be believed as truth, there's an uncomfortable amount of kiss-and-tell, meant-to-be funny detail of their "courtship" and one 23-minute sexual encounter. The book also contains much extensive descriptions of food and drink and, unfortunately, the negative physical ramifications of his over-indulgences for the author. Much of the book is in or references French and, although he explains the majority of it, I doubt that I would have followed it all if I hadn't been living in Paris for some years myself. Not that it detracts, but the perspective is definitely British, not American, so some minor references might not mean much to an American.

Fodor's Exploring Paris is a good research source. However, there is little depth to their recommendations. This makes it difficult if not impossible to discriminate from the many choices presented by the guide. The book also lacks the practical information necessary while traveling in a foreign country. The Berkeley Guides: The Budget Traveler's Handbook is a much better travel guide even if you are not interested in saving money. These guides provide practical information which proved essential during my wanderings in Europe.

Reading _Hermes in Paris_ is like looking at the stars through a telescope. They glitter, but are distant and ultimately, cold.

Set just before and during the beginning of the collapse of Napoleon III's empire, this book has tremendous potential for plot action. Which is unfulfilled, apparently as a conscious literary conceit. The author doesn't even tell readers what happened to the major characters, either the famous ones whose fate is recorded in history or others who are probably fictional. Well, he does give some (welcome) hints in the Afterword, but this is not the same as incorporating a real ending into the book. The characters fail to come to life or engage the reader's concern. The book's conceit is that the political collapse was engineered by Hermes, the trickster god, for no reason except amusement. Hermes truly does not care what happens to the human beings he manipulates. While this is probably meant as a comment on the randomness and unfairness of history, the viewpoint of an indifferent god too closely resembles the viewpoint of an indifferent author.

The prose does, as I said, glitter. So if you are willing to read a book mostly for the language, you might like _Hermes in Paris_.

I do not feel this matches Marlowe's "Faustus," "Massacre At Paris," "Dido Queen of Carthage," or "Edward II." But it does have some memorable features. At first, Barabas is a sympathetic character, but like many of Marlowe's characters, he goes too far and becomes detestable. Barabas' daughter Abigail is a striking figure. She initially feels sorry for her father but later sees what he has become and falls victim to her father's wickedness. Her death as a Christain in 3.6 is memorable. Ithamore is convincing as a villain who knows no honor. Ferneze is fine as the hero who eventually restores order. It's not Marlowe's best play, but it is still worth some interest.