The Content Reader

Paris in July 2021 is hosted by Tamara at Thyme for Tea . Today I want to share with you a book I read last year for a Swedish on-line magazine. 120, rue de la Gare by Léo Malet is a different kind of detective story.   It was my first meeting with Léo Malet and it was a good one. He lived 1909-96 and was considered one of the best thriller writers in France. His name is connected to the genre 'noir' which he developed to perfection. Already in his first book, 120, rue de la Gare , which was published in France in 1943, one can clearly note one of the main characteristics of the genre; right and wrong are not clearly defined, or even possible to clarify, the characters all have flaws and the story often contains social taboos.  Detectives are a popular genre today.  One of the problems with this genre today, I think, is that they are terribly violent in their actions. The murders are crude, sadistic and generally bestial and it sometimes feels difficult to even read about...

Thyme for Tea is hosting another Paris in July challenge this year. Now I am ready for my contribution to a French dinner.  Being on the road in our camper van, it is not that easy to make a French dinner. I still wanted to try something in all simplicity. At the time of the dinner I was at the Inari lake in north eastern part of Finland. A beautiful lake and we got a place just by the water.  In this part of the world the supermarkets mostly have basic things connected to France. They have a lot of local specialities that we also tried out. But, now it is all French. I managed to buy a brie and a camembert but that was about it. Oh, I also managed to find a beautiful wine from one of our favourite producers Guigal.  I pretend with this dinner that making the menu card in French will make everybody believe that this is a genuin French dinner. So here we go, the MENU! My husband, Martin, made the spaghetti. This recipe is one he makes very well and I always enjoy it. Bein...

I had just updated my list for the Classic Club Spin and ... voilá there is the e-mail with the number. This month's spin number is 6 and that means Women in Love  by D.H. Lawrence. That is a book I dread a little bit, but I will try to get through it.  This is my list.  1. The Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov 2. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Carter 3. Daisy Miller by Henry James 4. The Seahawk by Rafael Sabatini.    5. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoj  6. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence 7. Child Harold by Lord Byron 8. House of Mirth by Edith Wharton 9. The Red and the Black by Stendhal 10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 11. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak 12. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James  13. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence 14. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding 15. To Have and Have not by Ernest Hemingway 16. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 17. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham 18. The Brothers Karamazov by Fjodor Dos...

Time for a French author for Paris in July. Fred Vargas is a favourite and I found an e-book copy from my library. This is book number 10 in the Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg series. Adamsberg is not the ordinary detective and so are not his colleagues. I think that is one reason why I enjoy Vargas' books. The whole police precinct consists of individual characters with, sometimes, strange habits. The other reason I enjoy her books is that the murder stories often go back in time and often have historical links. As is the case in this book. Here we go back to Maximilian Robespierre and the French Revolution. "A woman is found murdered in her bathtub, and the murder has been made to look like a suicide. But a strange symbol found at the crime scene leads the local police to call Commissaire Adamsberg and his team. When the symbol is found near the body of a second disguised suicide, a pattern begins to emerge: both victims were part of a disastrous expedition to Iceland o...

Another day in Paris and what is more perfect than to combine Paris and a bookshop? That is what Nina George does in her novel about Monsieur Perdu and his broken heart.  “There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies—I mean books—that were written for one person only…A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.” Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened. After Perdu is finally tempted to read the ...

It is already 10 July and this is my first post for Paris in July 2021. I am on the road in our camper van and it has been difficult to find time to blog. I have been reading a few books and made a French dinner so there are some posts coming up soon.  However, I would like to start with a book I read and reviewed in May. It is such a wonderful and interesting historical fiction of Jeanne Hébuterne who was the muse of Amedeo Modigliani. Linda Lappin has written a novel, not only of the life of the two artists, but also of Paris. We meet Paris in the past and present. Both are as exciting as they can be, although the past gives us a kind of magic and dark side of Paris.  "Amedeo Modigliani, embittered and unrecognized genius, dies of meningitis on a cold January day in Montparnasse in 1920. Jeanne Hébuterne, his young wife and muse, follows 48 hours later, falling backwards through a window. Now a ghost, Jeanne drifts about the studio she shared with Modigliani—for she was not ...