Tuesday Intros -- But You Are in France, Madame

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.

Catherine Berry is a lover of France like me and her family  actually moved to France for a year. That's what her book But You Are in France, Madame is about. I have to admit that the title confuses me a little bit because I'm not sure where to put the emphasis, like were they lost and someone said, "But you are in France, Madame." Or did she want to do something the way the Australians do it and someone said, "But you are in France, Madame." There are just so many places to put the emphasis. Here's the intro from Chapter 1.

"Congratulations, you are Italian!"
"That's all I have to do to get my Italian passport? It's that easy?" my husband replied.
"No, now we do the paperwork!" Grinning widely, the embassy official rose from behind the counter to hug and kiss my husband, resulting in a spectacular near miss of cultural proportions.
And so began the paperwork, lots of it...and the spiral of confusion (ours), smiling affability at our confusion (theirs) and hours waiting in the embassy queue, just to be told why the documents we had been instructed to find at the previous visit were no longer the right ones.
Time was running out for us. We had been talking about our year in France for years, family and friends were worn down with cheering us along from the sidelines of our hurdle-strewn marathon to the airport tarmac. My husband and I, both Australian-born, but of European descent, knew that if our family's French adventure were to be anything more than a three-month touristy jaunt, we would need extra documents. Either my husband had to get his Italian passport, or I had to have a British one approved. Both seemed an even better option; hence his misleadingly optimistic exchange above.  

 Thanks for visiting and I look forward to seeing what everyone else is reading.

Review of Finding Fontainebleau

As someone who loves France and all things French, I'm already sold on a book when it gives me a snapshot of French life.
And this book, Finding Fontainebleau by Thad Carhart, is unique because it is a memoir about a time when many Americans might not recognize France, that time in the early 50s, after World War II as France recovered from the war.
Carhart's family went to France, after his father was assigned to work as a military officer there. So the American family with five children rented a large manor house, and his father worked in an office in Chateau Fontainebleau.
Part of the book is the author's remembrances of growing up in France. Having worked on a memoir myself, I question how much a 4-year-old boy could actually remember, but I'm sure he spent time interviewing older family members, and some of the stories have probably become family lore.
I love the peek into French schools at the time, as he wrote about the students who poured black ink into each student's inkwell every day, and then the 5-year-old children had to meticulously copy out letters across the page. I can't even imagine.
Carhart also returned to France as an adult with his own children, so he jumps to different time periods. As an adult, he digs into the Chateau Fontainebleau, which played such a pivotal role in his childhood, and he is fortunate enough to be taken in by the architect in charge of renovating the chateau so he can gather backstage information about each section.
Those sections are then interwoven with French history about the construction and use of the chateau and the French culture at the time.
I enjoyed reading Finding Fontainebleau and felt like I gained many insights into French history, although the story didn't sweep me away or give me an urgency to finish. It was more like a leisurely boat ride as I enjoyed the sights.

Dreaming of France -- Books Set in France

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.

When I wrote my first book set in France, I had a hard time finding any novels or memoirs that took place in France. I'd been seduced by Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, and I wanted to read more books that took me to Paris or Provence.
Since then, the field has become much more crowded, but I'm not complaining about it. I enjoy reading so many books with France as the backdrop, even as I continue to write my own novels.
Linda Kovic-Skow, author of the memoir French Illusions, has started a page on Goodreads called The Francophiles Group. It provides a place for French lovers to talk about books they've read and also offers book giveaways. This week, my novel, The Summer of France is available.
So if you're a member of Goodreads (and if you love to read, you should be), then you can join The Francophile Group. And while you're there, feel free to sign up to win a copy of The Summer of France. If you've already read it, then just go back later this month for another giveaway.

The banner on The Francophiles Group banner changes as new books are added. 

So if you love France and you love reading books set in France, join us on Goodreads. 

Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France. I'd love it if you'd stick with me as I begin to prepare for my own move to France in less than a year and a half. 

Tuesday Intros -- French Illusions From Tours to Paris

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.
Today I downloaded a new memoir on my Kindle. It's French Illusions: from Tours to Paris by Linda Kovic-Skow. This is the second part of Linda's memoir about her time in France, which began as an au pair. I read her first memoir two years ago and enjoyed it.
Here's the opening:

A chilly gust of December wind blew hair into my face as I leaned through the car window to swap cheek kisses with Evelyne. "Thanks for the ride," I said, pulling my blue wool coat tighter.
She smiled, and her toffee-brown eyes sparkled as she steered her Citroen down the cobbled street.

I'll be sure to write a review when I finish the memoir so you can all try it too.
I look forward to learning about some new reads from everyone else.

Dreaming of France -- L'Amour Actually

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.

I seem to be awash in books set in France. I just finished reading Honeymoon in Paris (twice). Once by Jojo Moyes and once by Juliette Sobanet. And I read That's Paris, an anthology of short stories set in Paris. Now comes L'Amour Actually: Falling in Love in the Heart of France by Melanie Jones. It is one of those British chick-lit books with an accident-prone main character who finds herself in a pickle after leaving London to live in Southwestern France.

She's flighty enough to make Bridget Jones seem sensible, but I'm still enjoying the experience.
Reading books set in France is almost as much fun as visiting.
Here's a snippet that shows part of the culture shock of moving to rural France:

"Well boys," I announced, standing up to leave, "I'd better be getting off. I need to do a bit of shopping then get back for the arrival of the furniture."
"No one will come during lunchtime, this is France," said Julien. "Your delivery men will be in a cafe somewhere having a big lunch and a carafe of wine. And the shop doesn't open until three o'clock either."
"Three o'clock! What am I supposed to do until then? What happens if people can only shop in their lunch break?"

 As I was looking at the Amazon link for this book, I had to chuckle at a bad review that says, "Too much elicit sex in it." Ha! Maybe the reviewer meant explicit, but that's her spelling issue. She made me laugh and didn't put me off downloading the book. I haven't come across any sex yet, elicit or otherwise. Here's the Amazon link.
Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France today and for leaving a comment. Also remember to check out each other's posts so you can share everyone's musings about France.

First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros -- Breathless An American Girl in Paris

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.
My bookshelf is appalling bare, but I have so little time to read this month that it isn't likely to change, although I'm getting that itch to go to the library and carry an armload of books home.

I did still have this on my shelf and decided to at least start it. It's a memoir set in the 1960s, Breathless An American Girl in Paris by Nancy K. Miller. I feel like I've been that girl, just in a different era.
Here's the intro:

I didn't set out to sleep with Philippe. For one thing, he was my parents' friend; for another, he was married.

On one of their many trips to Paris before I lived there, my parents met Philippe Rousel, an ophthalmologist, at Aux Charpentiers, a neighborhood restaurant near Saint-Germain des Pres, where long, family-style tables bring you into closer contact with other diners than you might wish. In his travel diary, which I discovered after his death, my father reported that the French friends who had recommended the resyaurant had said that "while not modern or elegant it was a place where intellectuals came to eat."

I hope the book is closer to that first paragraph than the second.
 

Dreaming of France -- Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer

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.

Today for Dreaming of France, I wanted to give you my review of a new memoirs, Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer by Vicki Lesage.

I've become blog friends with Vicki, who is an American married to a Frenchman. But sometimes I become friends with an author, and I still don't enjoy their books. When that happens, I avoid saying anything. Joyfully, I can say that I truly adored Vicki's latest book.
I read her previous book, Confessions of A Paris Party Girl, and that was fun, but her second book is better. At least I related to it more. Her first book told the story of a party girl moving to France and ended with her marriage to a Frenchman. This book began with her pregnancy.
I love the insights into the different ways the French handle things, like finding an apartment and going to doctor visits, not to mention the difference between giving birth in the U.S. and in France.

By the time I announced the pregnancy to my boss, I had been employed at my French company about a year. I hadn't quite gotten used to the lax French working style and the fact that they only actually work about half the year, once you factor in national holidays, a minimum of five weeks' vacation, and coffee breaks.
So I was shocked to learn I would be getting sixteen weeks of maternity leave. what would I do with all the time? Sure, take care of my baby. But as someone who has worked every day of her life since age 14, the prospect of four months sans travail was hard to imagine. 

Getting the baby a passport, finding the baby a school, trying to re-establish her party life with her friends, I relished the journey with Vicki.
It was one of those books that I had a hard time putting down. Luckily, I had it on my Kindle, so I could pick it up anytime I had a few spare minutes and finished it in just a few days.
It's available for $4.99 on Kindle or $13.49 in paperback on Amazon. Here's the link: Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer. 
And, this topic is mildly related to Dreaming of France -- I'm giving away a $10 Amazon gift card on Tuesday to everyone who has liked my author page on Facebook since it hit 300. The odds are pretty good cause I'm only at 305 likes. So, if you're on Facebook, stop by my author page and click like. You may win an Amazon gift card and have the money to buy this book or one of my books on Kindle.
Also this month, jumping the gun by a day, it's time for Paris in July.

Head on over to the main website to play all month. I'll still be here dreaming of France every Monday throughout the year and in July too. 

FranceBookTours -- From Here To Paris Review and Giveaway

It's time for another France Book Tours review. This one is From Here to Paris by Cris Hammond. 

Ever since I first read A Year in Provence, I've enjoyed memoirs about ex-pats who move to France. This one was no exception. Make sure you enter the giveaway at the end to win a copy of this ebook, which is open to everyone in the U.S. and internationally 

The author had lost his job in California and started a new business taking pictures of boats in San Francisco Bay then selling the pictures online to the boats' owners. During the grueling work, he got smitten by the idea of spending time in France and ended up buying a barge that would travel up the rivers and canals of France. He had to deal with renovations of the barge, learning how to take the barge through the locks without getting bowled over by much larger ships, and life in France. The scenes in France were colorful and took me right there with each glass of wine and each painting the author created. Once he had his priorities straight, living in France, he started drawing and painting again. And he was able to sell his paintings to earn money. It made me nudge my own artistic husband. "Couldn't we move to France if you started painting?" I asked.

My husband read the beginning of this book and enjoyed it -- laughing out loud even -- so I had to buy a copy for him to read too. 

The book had a number of funny stories along with remembrances from his childhood and life with his father. One of his difficulties moving to France was the language, like his morning trip to the bakery to buy a croissant.

As I stood there, gazing upon the scene of sensual delights, I would be overcome with a feeling of imminent doom. Since arriving in St. Jean de Losne, I had come every morning to this little family-owned boulangerie presided over by Madame La Pattissier herself, and had asked her for the same thing: one croissant and one baguette. Did her eyes brighten with recognition when she saw me? Did she smile warmly and say, "Bonjour, Monsieur Cris. Comment ca va?" and then reach for her most perfectly formed croissant? Did she call to her husband in the back to bring out the cart of loaves he'd just pulled hot from the oven?
Non! Every morning she looked at me as if I had just run over her cat. The problem was that croissants and baguettes have a sex, a gender, and at that hour of the morning, I could never remember which was which. Normally, I don't concern myself with the gender of pastry, but in this shop it was critical, because I wanted just one baguette and one croissant. There was a female way to say one, which was une. And there was a male way to say it, un. If the gender of the number didn't match the gender of the pastry, in this patisserie you were dead meat. 

Although I enjoyed reading about this life on a barge, it definitely convinced me that I wouldn't want to travel through France on a barge. They move so slowly. It would drive me crazy. My husband and I decided that barge travel probably wasn't the best choice for type-A personalities like me. Traveling on a barge might not be my first choice, but I definitely enjoyed reading about it.
Cris Hammond is a nationally known artist, cartoonist, and entrepreneur. His comic strip, Speed Walker, Private Eye, was seen daily in over 150 newspapers across the country, from The Miami Herald to The Seattle Sun Times, The San Diego Union, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune. His paintings of ships and the sea have appeared in galleries in Sausalito, San Francisco, Tiburon, and Carmel, California. He led special effects teams to Academy Awards for Special Effects in motion pictures including Star Trek IV, Innerspace, and The Abyss, among others. In 1994, facing penury, he left his artistic pursuits, bought a briefcase and a couple ties, and went out and got a real corporate job. Eight years and four more neckties later, he walked into his office one morning and was ambushed by the waiting Exit Interview Team, which informed him that he was, as of that moment, “out on his ear.”
After a suitable period of bi-polar careening between panic and reflection, he realized that he was too young to retire and too old to go looking for another corporate job. So, he sold the house, bought a barge in France and started painting again.
Now he and his wife, Linda, spend half the year in California living and working in their tiny art studio near San Francisco, and the other half doing the same thing on the barge in France. Piloting their 1925 Dutch barge Phaedra, they’ve meandered through more than 1200 kilometers of canals and rivers and negotiated more than 850 locks in their travels from the Rhone wine region, through Burgundy to Chablis and down the Seine into Paris.

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First Paragraph, Tuesday Teasers -- Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer

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 should probably save this French book for Paris in July, but I started it this week so I'll go ahead and share the opening and a teaser here. It's Confessions of a Paris Potty Trainer by Vicki Lesage. I previously read and reviewed her book  Confessions of a Paris Party Girl, which was a lot of fun in a Bridget Jones memoir-style. I loved the explanation of all the hoops she had to jump through to marry her Frenchman. Now Lesage has moved on to child birthing and child rearing in the City of Light.  Here's the intro.

"Oh la la," she said, surprised. "I can fit two fingers in there."

Now, if you're like me, I immediately guessed what she was talking about. Here's a hint though, the first chapter is titled "Confessions at the Check-Up."

I'm joining Teaser Tuesday this week too.
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  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 teaser.
Here's a teaser from 42% on my Kindle as she prepares the baby for daycare:

 "In the beginning, the babies will drink bottles at mealtimes. As you introduce new foods at home, let us know and we will do the same here. Each Monday, Chef posts the menu for the week. You can check the meal plan to ensure you don't serve the same dish for dinner."

That explains so much about the French, doesn't it? Every preschool and daycare has its own chef. Can you imagine? Pretty different from the lunch ladies with the hairnet at American schools.
I look forward to seeing all of your intros and teasers this week.

Dreaming of France -- From Here to Paris

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.

I started a new memoir this week. From Here to Paris by Cris Hammond tells the story of a nearly 60-year-old man living in Los Angeles who lost his job just before the recession. He and his wife decided to buy a barge in France and live on it for part of the year.

Hammond is also an artist who paints while he is in France and I'm enjoying his adventures. My husband is also reading it and has actually laughed aloud at parts of the book.
My review of this book won't be published until the end of June, so you'll have to wait a while to see my final verdict on the book.
Here's an excerpt from early in the novel:

The sun was setting by the time I checked into my room at Chez Holiday Inn on Rue de Lyon in Paris. I was jet lagged and tired but desperate to stretch my legs, so I went down the street to wander around. The glass doors at the Holiday Inn slid open and the city poured in. Contrary to just about every movie depiction of Paris, the true sounds of the city aren't accordions playing La Vie en Rose. Rather the broad tree-lined boulevards and quaint side streets reverberate with whining scooters, thundering motorcycles, small honking cars, tinkling bicycle bells, and bleating police claxons, all clog dancing over a background buzz of people talking a mile a minute. The pace is manic. Engines of all sizes impatiently rev at stop lights while pedestrians, dressed in black with nine-foot-long scarves, leap off the curbs with the assurance of trapeze artists who know they'll always be caught by their lover and greeted with a kiss on each cheek. 

I enjoy most books that take me away to France. A well-written book, I enjoy even more.
What are you sharing about France today?

First Chapter, First Paragraph -- Grape Expectations by Caro Feely

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've been reading, but I haven't been blogging about my reading. I thought I'd change that this week by playing along with First Chapter, First Paragraph.

I read a memoir about a family moving to France -- this one with little kids and they bought a vineyard. Everyone's dream, right? Wow, the author makes it sound a lot harder than anyone imagined in her book Grape Expectations by Caro Feely.

Here's the intro from Chapter 1:

"I think this wine is like an ageing dance. Her moves are slow and supple. Then she performs a pirouette just like she did when she was younger."
Pierre-Jacques dipped the pipette into the wine-stained oak barrel, transferring tastes swiftly to our outstretched glasses.
We stood in the entrance to his cellar, a cave hewn out of the chalky cliffs, captivated by the softening sun and his sensuous descriptions. The wine was smooth and serene across my tongue before fresh raspberries twirled at the finish. 

As you can tell, this book can teach you a lot about wine tasting, but it's also a fun read about a family too. I'll have a full review of the book on Friday as part of France Book Tours. 

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.

Dreaming of France -- French Illusions memoir

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.
I'm always on the lookout for fun books and especially books set in France.
Emma at Words and Peace blog alerted me to a new book about an American au pair in France.

Of course, since I've written 25,000 words of my own non-fiction account as a nanny in France, I had to read this one.
I'm only a couple of chapters into reading this memoir, which is called French Illusions. The author, Linda Kovic-Skow, tells the story from the late 1970s when she wanted to be a flight attendant and was turned down because she didn't speak another language. She determined to learn French by going to France as an au pair. Of course, she pretended she already spoke French to get the job as an au pair.
I'll let you know what I think when I finish.
I'm looking forward to your Dreaming of France posts today.

Dreaming of France -- Le Road Trip

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.
I'm not sure why this book sat on my shelf for so long before I finally picked it up to read it. It was a quick fun read with lots of illustrations and love for France.
The author, Vivian Swift, compares travelling to falling in love. She retells the story of her 2005 honeymoon with her husband James, along with relating the travels to previous trips she took starting in the 1970s.
Swift must be drawing and journaling constantly as she travels, sharing her insights and quirky illustrations.

I loved her insights on fashion for tourists and the French,  and the simplest drawings of gates outside buildings or pastries or sunsets.
Here's a photo I took of one of the pages. You can see that Swift illustrated and romanticized the different windows that she saw in French buildings. For instance, she said the top left window could be "poet's garret, maid's room, foreign studentin in the attic." I like the one in the second row from the top on the right, which she dubs "Novelist's atelier." No doubt I'll be staring out of a window like that as I write one day.

My other favorite part of the book was her trip to Normandy and her decription of Gustave Flaubert's desperation to leave the provinces. It sounded so much like my own teenage boys.

"My youth steeped me in an opiate of bordeom sufficient for the remainder of my days," Swift quoted Flaubert about why he wrote Madame Bovary.

And another quote from Flaubert in a letter to his friend. "I loathe it, I despise it. Oh, Attila, when wilt thou return, kind humanitarian, with 400,000 horsemen, to set fire to this land of trouser straps and suspenders." Obviously, Swift has inspired me to read Flaubert.

Swift started her journey in Paris then travelled to Normandy, Brittany, Bordeaux, the Loire Valley, Chartres and back to Paris.

I enjoyed travelling through France with Swift and her new husband. You should consider taking Le Road Trip too.

A Month of Intense Writing

This November I'm going to be participating in NaNoWriMo again.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it rolls around every November. The goal is to write 50,000 words in one month.
I'm cheating a little bit because I'm writing a memoir rather than a novel. But I don't know of a website called NaMeWriMo, which would be National Memoir Writing Month.
 I'm returning to the story I started this summer about my experience as a nanny in France. The very original title is An American Nanny in France. I had about 24,000 words written this fall before I got caught up in trying to market my novel The Summer of France. So I haven't worked on my memoir for over a month.
If I complete 50,000 words in November and add that to my 24,000  words, I'll be nearly at the length of a book. I usually aim for around 80,000 to 90,000 words.
So in just one short month, I can have the basics done.
That's when the hard work begins as I gather all those words I've written and shape them into something that carries readers along with me as I take care of two little girls in Corsica, Bourges and Paris, France.  There's also a crush on a French doctor, sailing lessons in the Mediterranean, and an Argentine sailor.
If you're doing NaNoWriMo, let me know and I'd love to be your Writing Buddy.

The Making of a Memoir

I'm writing a new book. I just started a few weeks ago and I have 63 pages already.
Maybe I'm moving quickly because I already know the ending.
This time, instead of a novel, I'm writing a memoir.
During the Paris in July meme sponsored by Thyme for Tea and Bookbath, I realized that most of the French books that we readers recommended were memoirs. So, with my brain trust of running friends, we decided that I should write a memoir. Then we took it a step further, notched it up, and decided I should write about my time spent as a nanny. That's a combination of two tell-all books that people are sure to love.
So rather than a story about Americans who move to France and try desperately to fit into the local culture, I'll be writing about an American girl (me) thrust into the midst of a French family -- the awkwardness and the insights. So far, I'm titling it An American Nanny in France. An American Nanny in Paris sounds a little better, but we were only in Paris for a month, spending the other months in Corsica and at a family house near Bourges.

This looks like the perfect writing spot for me
with my notebook, my wine and the pool
shimmering before me.

I'll be changing the names of the French family members so that I can be very honest about everything that happened. I have written about some of these adventures on my blog before, so I guess I'll need to go back and change the names there too.
Anyway, I wanted to share with you my exciting news and tell you a story about how the memoir led to my mom and me laughing so hard that we cried.
I haven't written a memoir before, so I was kind of puzzled about recreating conversations and other important events. I have photos. I have a journal, which includes some conversations, but I also wrote in-depth letters to my mom and my brother Kevin while I was in France. I need those letters.
I saw Kevin last week and he said he didn't have the letters. He suggested I try Mom and Dad's house.
Of course, Mom and Dad have moved about five times since my trip 25 years ago.
I alerted Mom that I was searching for the letters and said we'd look when I arrived this weekend. she had already emptied out her mother's trunk (new in 1915) looking for the letters with no luck. She pulled out another bin that was filled with greeting cards and letters and memorabilia. We went through all the musty letters. We handed over golf score cards from years ago to my dad. We threw away the envelopes all those cards had come in.
Then my mom picked up a hand-made card from my little brother. "Happy Mother's Day, Mom," it said. "From Kevin Kincer" and that started us laughing that he felt the need to sign his last name to his mother.
Then my dad found, tucked in a birthday card to him from his mother some letters from me and my sister. They were letters we'd written to my grandmother and she apparently sent them back to him when she wasn't getting along with our family. Mom and I were laughing at that too -- how ludicrous.
Then Mom read aloud the letter my 9-year-old self had written. The basic gist of the letter was whether my grandmother had gotten my previous letters and why she hadn't written back when I was still waiting for a reply. I was quite insistent and pushy, even at 9 years old. As Mom read the letter, the tears were running out of her eyes and down our cheeks.
Sometimes you just have to be there to understand why the joke is funny. But we definitely enjoyed our time going through the old box of cards and letters.
The bad news is we didn't find the letters from France. The good news is that we have more boxes upstairs and can look forward to another day of going through old memorabilia. Maybe they'll make us laugh again.


The Reluctant Tuscan -- Review

I love featuring a book on my blog and hearing from the author. That's what happened a few weeks ago when I included The Reluctant Tuscan on my First Paragraph, Teaser Tuesday blog. The author, Phil Doran, sent me an email. I had commented that I liked the cover of The Reluctant Tuscan because it reminded me of A Year in Provence and he confirmed that the same artist had created both covers. He also said that John Travolta and Kelly Preston optioned the movie rights to his book, so a movie of The Reluctant Tuscan may be on its way. It's always fun to get the inside scoop from an author.
I finished reading The Reluctant Tuscan and truly enjoyed it. My husband is reading it now. Of course, we have a not-so-secret dream of moving to France once the kids are all out of the house, so we consider the book more of a how-to guide than simply a memoir from someone who made the leap.
The book is written with a lot of humor and insight into the upheaval that comes with embracing a new culture. Doran is a Hollywood writer hesitant to admit that younger writers are getting more bites than he is. Doran's wife sees Hollywood tearing him apart and buys a decrepit house in Tuscany, hoping to convince him to move there and begin enjoying life.
Sometimes I get frustrated at the scenarios that allow people to live their lives in other continents, not worried about jobs and health insurance and raising children, but Doran has no qualms about admitting the financial limitations and his attempts to sell his writing while in Italy. Even while learning that life in Italy is more about living than making a living, Doran nurses some hopes that he can make it big as a writer in Hollywood. He gives some interesting insights into that world as well.
The book made me laugh a lot. The couple rented a house where the heat didn't work so they wore layers of clothing. Then when the heat was turned on, you guessed it, a heat wave came in and they walked around sweating. Things like that are harder to get fixed when dealing with a foreign language and foreign culture.
As a straightforward American, I find it hard to believe that so much finagling goes on while trying to get roads built and houses remodeled. At one point, while trying to hide the fact that their old ruin of a house might be covering a more historic shell built by the Etruscans, they invoke the Sopranos as New York relatives to intimidate the builder. I can't imagine being that ballsy.
Mostly though, I enjoyed getting to feel the culture that surrounded Doran as he slowly unwound from the importance of being a success to the importance of enjoying life.

Paris in Love -- Review

Continuing with my obsession for all things French, I picked up the book Paris in Love by Eloisa James. I'm not sure why it was called Paris in Love unless it's because the author writes romance novels.

The book was mostly like a series of tweets on Twitter. I mean, not that I'm on Twitter, but it was made up of a series of short snippets about the author's life as she and her Italian husband, plus two kids, a 15-year-old and 11-year-old live in Paris for a year. Okay, first we have to get over the resentment that they have the kind of jobs that allow them to simply take a sabbatical and move to Paris. They both teach at American universities. The author also tries to make us not feel so bad about her lucky life by beginning with her breast cancer and her mother's recent death. It's hard to begrudge someone a year in Paris after they've been through those hardships.
I enjoyed the book, even though I'm usually a plot person. It was nice to be able to pick it up for a few minutes and get through several tweet-sized paragraphs without commiting to the suspense of a whole chapter. Here's one example:

It's night, after a day of rain...the windows are open and the strains of a glorious opera pour from the conservatory down the street.(p. 14)

Many of the "tweets" just set the mood in Paris.

Mirabile dictu! Anna has found two things she likes in Paris. The first is chocolate, and the second is the rat catcher's shop, which has four big rats hanging upside down from traps. We detour to gawk at them before grocery shopping.(p. 14)

Well, I enjoy chocolate and I have stood in front of that exact window. Isn't it funny how we love finding things we know in a book?
So, I enjoyed the book and seeing Paris through Ms. James' eyes. The book cover and title bugged me though. The title, I already explained. The cover problem. The family doesn't have a dog. Well, it had a chihuahua but the Italian mother now has it, and the dog on the cover is not a chichuahua anyway.
Don't let these little details get in the way if you want a vicarious year in Paris.