Monday, June 25, 2012

My Paris Reading List

I mentioned over here that I'm going to Paris in August for my birthday with my DH and very good friends.
As always planning a trip makes me want to read books about the area.

There is no shortage of books set in Paris. There are many many classics such as A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Phantom of the Opera, The Razor's Edge, and many of Henry James and Hemingway's books.

Madame Bovary takes place near Rouen which we will be visiting as well.

Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife
I've read about Hadley before but this is a new biography.
Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway were the golden couple of Paris in the twenties, the center of an expatriate community boasting the likes of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and James and Nora Joyce. In this haunting account of the young Hemingways, Gioia Diliberto explores their passionate courtship, their family life in Paris with baby Bumby, and their thrilling, adventurous relationship--a literary love story scarred by Hadley's loss of the only copy of Hemingway's first novel and ultimately destroyed by a devastating mEnage A trois on the French Riviera.

Compelling, illuminating, poignant, and deeply insightful, "Paris Without End" provides a rare, intimate glimpse of the writer who so fully captured the American imagination and the remarkable woman who inspired his passion and his art--the only woman Hemingway never stopped loving.

The Paris WifeIs also about Hadley and Ernest. This is historical fiction and not a biography. Synopsis here.

Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and CoThis sounds delightful! Synopsis here.

This is not going to be one that I will read but I found the cover to be enchanting.A Man in Uniform

1 comment:

  1. Great list of Paris books! I read The Paris Wife several months ago and loved it.

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