Dreaming of France -- Bonjour 40

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.
This year, I lucked into a number of books set in France, both novels and memoirs. This week, I finished Bonjour 40: A Paris Travel Log by Karen A. Chase. Chase traveled to Paris to celebrate her 40th birthday and spent nearly 40 days in Paris with her boyfriend meeting her over there toward the end of her trip. She kept a travel blog and turned it into a book.
I'm not a short story reader, so maybe I'm not the typical reader for this book. I enjoyed some of the short posts, but I needed more meat to the story. I thought this book could instead make a great calendar with insights for every day.
Even though the book was short, 132 pages in paperback, it took me quite a while to finish it. Nothing dragged me back to it. I read it on my Kindle so I would turn to it in my spare moments.
Toward the end I found some really lovely writing as Chase described moments of light and love in Paris.

The first was while we were bicycling along the Seine near the Grand Palais, our tires crunching through the gravel. The mid-afternoon sun was dappling through the thick canvas of leaves overhead, falling randomly onto the dusty path ahead of us. Ted and I rode on opposite sides of a long row of chestnut trees, seeing each other in between the darkened trunks, like a movie-reel slowed so you could see every photo-perfect frame.

This memoir may interest you if you want some small bites of one person's trip to Paris.

First Paragraph, Tuesday Teaser -- Bonjour 40

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading
I'm still reading my 800-page book, Paris, but I started a new book on my Kindle -- Bonjour 40 A Paris Travel Log by Karen A. Chase.
For her 40th birthday, Chase decides to stay in Paris for 40 days and she kept a blog while there which she has turned into a book. Here's the intro:

On Paris, there are simply not enough guidebooks, maps, language lessons, recipes, stories, or tips for me. My friends, neighbors and the bookstore gave me a steady supply of what-to, what-not-tos and how-tos to prepare for this trip.

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays. Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Open to a random page of your current read h and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers. Here's my teaser from Day 7:

Every American woman should visit Paris. I asked a waiter how to say, "I am full" in French. Word-for-word it would be, "Je suis plain," however to say that in French means  you're pregnant, so I knew that wasn't it. The waiter's response, however, perfectly summed up French women. "There is no translation. It would not be elegant for a woman to say that." And elegant they are, regardless of age or attire.