Showing posts with label france. Show all posts
Showing posts with label france. Show all posts
Apr 1, 2018
Jul 4, 2017
May 1, 2017
Jul 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016
The elegance of the hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
Summary: In an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families, Reně, the concierge, and Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius, hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Kakuro Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Reně's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her.
Kirkus Reviews
The second novel (but first to be published in the United States) from France-based author Barbery teaches philosophical lessons by shrewdly exposing rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors.Renée Michel has been the concierge at an apartment building in Paris for 27 years. Uneducated, widowed, ugly, short and plump, she looks like any other French apartment-house janitor, but Mme Michel is by no means what she seems. A "proletarian autodidact," she has broad cultural appetites—for the writings of Marx and Kant, the novels of Tolstoy, the films of Ozu and Wenders. She ponders philosophical questions and holds scathing opinions about some of the wealthy tenants of the apartments she maintains, but she is careful to keep her intelligence concealed, having learned from her sister's experience the dangers of using her mind in defiance of her class. Similarly, 12-year-old Paloma Josse, daughter of one of the well-connected tenant families, shields her erudition, philosophical inclinations, criticism—and also her dreams of suicide. But when a new Japanese tenant, Kakuro Ozu, moves in, everything changes for both females. He detects their intelligence and invites them into his cultured life. Curious and deeply fulfilling friendships blossom among the three, offering Paloma and Renée freedom from the mental prisons confining them.With its refined taste and political perspective, this is an elegant, light-spirited and very European adult fable. Copyright Kirkus 2008 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Check Availability
Oct 1, 2015
The Paris architect - Charles Belfoure
Summary: "In 1942 Paris, gifted architect Lucien Bernard accepts a commission that will bring him a great deal of money -- and maybe get him killed. But if he's clever enough, he'll avoid any trouble. All he has to do is design a secret hiding place for a wealthy Jewish man, a space so invisible that even the most determined German officer won't find it. He sorely needs the money, and outwitting the Nazis who have occupied his beloved city is a challenge he can't resist. But when one of his hiding spaces fails horribly, and the problem of where to hide a Jew becomes terribly personal, Lucien can no longer ignore what's at stake."--From Amazon.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
How far would you go to help a stranger? What would you risk? Would you trade your life for another's in the name of what is right? Belfoure explores these questions and others in this debut novel set in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Lucien Bernard—who, like the book's author, is an architect—is offered a large sum of money to outsmart the Gestapo by devising unique hiding places for Jews, though he knows that anyone caught helping them will be tortured and killed by the Germans. Danger is everywhere: Lucien's mistress, Adele, a successful fashion designer, has an affair with a Gestapo colonel. Lucien's new assistant will betray him in a heartbeat. Offered a juicy German factory commission that involves working with a Nazi officer who admires architecture and art, Lucien's web weaves more complexly. And when he falls in love with Adele's assistant, rescues a child, and contacts some of the individuals he's saved, the stakes grow higher and Lucien's thoughts turn from money to vengeance. Seamlessly integrated architectural details add to the excitement. Belfoure's characters are well-rounded and intricate. Heart, reluctant heroism, and art blend together in this spine-chilling page-turner. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (Oct.)
Check Availability
Aug 1, 2015
The hotel on Place Vendome - Tilar Mazzeo
Summary: Taking readers behind the doors of Paris's Hotel Ritz during the Nazi occupation of World War II, this extraordinary chronicle reveals a hotbed of illicit affairs, deadly intrigues, courageous acts of defiance and treachery and the people and events that made this opulent cultural landmark legendary. 25,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
Publishers Weekly Reviews
The Paris Hôtel Ritz evokes 20th-century glamour, smoke-filled air, and hard-drinking patrons with names like Picasso, Proust, Hemingway, and Chanel. WWII, however, brought Nazis, adding to the odd mix of Allied spies posing as German officers, members of the Resistance, and ambitious American journalists desperate to score the next scoop. Mazzeo (The Secret of Chanel No. 5) enthrallingly depicts a hotbed of both the magnificent and the mundane, the careless carousing and deep-seated tensions that kept the hotel a primary meeting place for both Allied and Axis agents. While the book doesn't deal directly in scenes of intrigue between key figures, its colorful vignettes reveal the hotel's role in the unsuccessful Valkyrie operation and the struggles of Coco Chanel and a one-name French movie star to survive their "horizontal collaborations." The stories of the hotel staff members who publicly served Hitler's trusted officials while privately supporting the Resistance reveal particularly heroic undertakings. Readers will enjoy Mazzeo's fascinating collection of secretive, scheming historical characters, all under one elegant roof. 19 b&w photos. (Mar.)
Check Availability
Apr 1, 2015
All the light we cannot see - Anthony Doerr
Summary: "From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr's magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed. It rests, historically, during the occupation of France during WWII, but brief chapters told in alternating voices give the overall—and long—narrative a swift movement through time and events. We have two main characters, each one on opposite sides in the conflagration that is destroying Europe. Marie-Louise is a sightless girl who lived with her father in Paris before the occupation; he was a master locksmith for the Museum of Natural History. When German forces necessitate abandonment of the city, Marie-Louise's father, taking with him the museum's greatest treasure, removes himself and his daughter and eventually arrives at his uncle's house in the coastal city of Saint-Malo. Young German soldier Werner is sent to Saint-Malo to track Resistance activity there, and eventually, and inevitably, Marie-Louise's and Werner's paths cross. It is through their individual and intertwined tales that Doerr masterfully and knowledgeably re-creates the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers.High-Demand Backstory: A multipronged marketing campaign will make the author's many fans aware of his newest book, and extensive review coverage is bound to enlist many new fans. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Feb 5, 2015
Museum masterpieces The Louvre (DVD)
Summary: "In Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre, expert art critic and historian Richard Brettell takes you on an unforgettable journey through one of the world's greatest museums. This 12-lecture series begins with an overview of the Louvre's colorful history as royal palace, art academy, and national showcase. Then you'll explore some of the most beautiful and renowned examples from the museum's remarkable collection of European paintings from the late medieval period through the early 19th century, including masterworks by Raphael, Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Watteau, Rubens and Vermeer..."--Publisher description.
Lectures: 1. Palace to Museum, the story of the Louvre -- 2. Leonardo and the origins of the collections -- 3. Italian Renaissance and the Baroque painting -- 4. Spanish school of painting -- 5. Rubens and Flemish painting, Early German -- 6. Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Dutch painting -- 7. De La Tour, Le Nain, and 17th century painting -- 8. Claude and Poussin, French painter in Rome -- 9. Watteau and Chardin -- 10. Boucher, Fragonard, and the Rococo in France -- 11. Jacques-Louis David and his school -- 12. Delacrois and Ingres, the great dialectic.
Check Availability
Nov 1, 2014
Mortal Heart - Robin LaFevers
Mortal Heart - LaFevers, RobinSummary: The powerful conclusion to Robin LaFever's New York Times best-selling His Fair Assassins trilogy, Annith's worst fears are realized when she discovers that, despite her lifelong training to be an assassin, she is being groomed by the abbess as a Seeress, to be forever shut up in the convent of Saint Mortain.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
This final volume in LaFevers's much-praised His Fair Assassin trilogy centers on Annith, the most brilliant of the young women brought up in the convent of St. Mortain, an ancient Celtic god still very much present in the tale's 15th- century Brittany. Despite being unequalled with knives and bow, Annith has been refused assignment as an assassin by the Abbess even though her close friends, Sybella and Ismae, have already made their first kills. When a much younger and underprepared girl is sent out in her stead, probably to her death, Annith rebels, fleeing the convent. She hopes to aid the endangered Duchess of Brittany whose meager forces must protect their country from a French invasion. On her way, however, Annith meets Balthazaar—a Hellequin, one of the damned souls charged with bringing the recently dead to Mortain, but also "breathtakingly handsome in a dark, almost broken way"—and her life is changed forever. Both a powerful tale of political intrigue and a heady supernatural romance, this memorable adventure will entirely satisfy devotees of this series. Ages 14–up.
Check Availability
Oct 1, 2014
Timeline - Michael Crichton
Timeline - Crichton, MichaelSummary: Michael Crichton's new novel opens on the threshold of the twenty-first century. It is a world of exploding advances on the frontiers of technology. Information moves instantly between two points, without wires or networks. Computers are built from single molecules. Any moment of the past can be actualized -- and a group of historians can enter, literally, life in fourteenth-century
feudal France. Imagine the risks of such a journey.
Booklist Reviews
Crichton sets himself another technical challenge: plausibly taking a group of characters 600 years into the past. This shouldn't be too much of a chore for the man who brought dinosaurs back to life, but readers familiar with his work will note that he seems to struggle a bit harder than usual to sell the premise, as though he's having a hard time buying it himself. Once that's out of the way, though, the novel is a splendid read. The plot is pretty straightforward: Edward Johnson, a history professor, is stranded in France in the year 1357, and a trio of his graduate students must go back to extricate him. Unlike some writers, Crichton doesn't use his historical setting merely as window dressing. He immerses his characters, and his readers, in the past: its politics, its language, its social structure, even the way it looks (early scenes, in which the young grad students marvel at being in this place they've only seen as ancient ruins, are realistic and, for any reader with an interest in history, thrilling). The story itself, which involves a French siege upon an English castle (England controlled France at the time), is packed with adventure and surprises.
Check Availability
Sep 1, 2014
A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle
A Year in Provence - Mayle, PeterSummary: The author describes his experiences when he and his wife moved to a two-hundred-year-old French farmhouse, and shares his observations on the people and culture of Provence.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
The author describes his first 12 months in Provence, after he and his wife have abandoned England for an 18th-century farmhouse in the Luberon Mountains. Throwing themselves into the life of this rural region, they master the local customs, gain partial understanding of their neighbors' patois, overcome the frustrations of French bureaucracy, and learn to deal with workmen who operate on the idiosyncratic Provencal sense of time. In nimble prose, Mayle, columnist for GQ , captures the humorous aspects of visits to markets, vineyards and goat races, and hunting for mushrooms. Even donating blood is an occasion for fun. The Provencal cuisine is Mayle's leitmotif, however. He opens with an account of a memorable New Year's lunch, ends with an appreciation of an impromptu Christmas dinner, and describes just about every meal eaten during the months in between. His adventures, gastronomic and otherwise, are thoroughly entertaining.
Check Availability
Amélie (DVD)
Amélie (DVD)Summary: Amélie is a young woman who had a decidedly unusual childhood: misdiagnosed with an unusual heart condition, Amélie didn't attend school with other children, but spent most of her time in her room, where she developed a keen imagination and an active fantasy life. Despite all this, Amélie has grown into a healthy and beautiful young woman who works in a cafe and has a whimsical, romantic nature. She decides to step into the lives of others around her to help them out.
Check Availability
Jun 1, 2014
Hidden - Loïc Dauvillier
Summary: "A grandmother shares the story of her experiences in WWII with her grandchild in this graphic novel for young readers"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
Worried that her grandmother has had a nightmare, a young girl offers to listen to the story, hoping to ease her grandmother's mind. And for the first time since her own childhood, the grandmother opens up about her life during WWII, the star she had to wear, the disappearance of her parents, and being sent to the country where she had to lie about her name and her beliefs. Every year, more stories set during the Holocaust are released, many for children, and this one is particularly well done. Dauvillier doesn't sugarcoat the horrors of the Holocaust; instead, he shares them from the perspective of a girl young enough to not quite understand the true scope of the atrocities. Set in occupied France, the story told is honest and direct, and each scene is revealed with care. The frankness of the storytelling is tempered by appealing cartoonlike illustrations that complement the story and add a layer of emotion not found in the narration. A Holocaust experience told as a bedtime story? It sounds crazy, but here it works. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Apr 3, 2014
Poupee de son - France Gall (CD)
Summary: Import-only collection from the French vocalist containing 23 of her most popular recordings from 1963-67, including eight tracks written by French icon Serge Gainsbourg. Gall became a household name in Europe when she won the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest with her hit song 'Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son'. She then spent the next few decades as one of France's most popular performers. Gall was later married to French singer/songwriter Michel Berger, with whom she collaborated with on many of her most popular recordings. Features 23 tracks.
Check Availability
Mar 1, 2014
The roads to Santiago - Derry Brabbs
Summary: Brabbs traces the four main routes within France leading to Santiago de Compostella, the third most important pilgrimage destination for medieval travelers. His photographs of the journeys are breathtaking, showing the tiny towns and grand cathedrals where the pilgrims took, and still take, shelter. In many towns of France and Spain the scallop symbol of St. James can still be found at wayside inns and hostels. Brabbs has written an informative and lively text to accompany his photos. This not only gives the background of the pilgrimage sites and the purpose behind the journey, but also describes the personal reactions of one who followed the same path as thousands over the centuries. Today there are more than religious reasons for making a pilgrimage to Compostella, but, as Brabbs shows so beautifully, anyone who follows the old roads there cannot avoid being affected by the journey.
Derry Brabbs is regarded as one of England's finest photographers within the sphere of heritage and landscape, with over 20 illustrated books to his credit. His stunning color photographs for the worldwide best-seller James Herriot's Yorkshire contributed to its success. He is the author of several beautifully photographed titles celebrating England's landscape and architectural legacy. His other titles for Frances Lincoln include The River Thames, Hadrian's Wall, A Year in the Life of Rutland, A Year in the Life of the Welsh Marches and Coast to Coast with Wainwright.
- (Mbi Pub Co)
Check Availability
The Vogue years - Francoise Hardy (CD)
Summary: Compiled from her recordings for the prestigious French record label Vogue, this definitive 49 track collection includes her international million-selling hit, the self-penned 'Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles'. All tracks here are gorgeously sung in her native French. During her time, on Vogue,Hardy was able to to blend American and British production sophistication with a Continental European sensibility, with almost operatic backing vocals, sounding sometimes Spector-esque. Includes extensive sleevenotes and rare photos.
Check Availability
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)