The Content Reader

For Paris in July 2016 , hosted by Tamara at  Thyme for Tea  I found this interesting real life event about a 'crime passionnel'. While reading The Sleepwalkers I came on to a fascinating, real ’crime passionnel’ which happened in France in 1914. As mentioned in the book: ”In Paris, the news from Sarajevo was pushed off the front pages by a scandal of momentous proportions. On 16 March 1914, Madame Caillaux, wife of the former prime minister Joseph Caillaux, had walked into the office of Gaston Calmette, editor of Figaro, and fired six bullets into him. The reason for the murder was the campaign the newspaper had waged against her husband, in the course of which Calmette had published love letters she had written to Joseph Caillaux while he was still married to his first wife” Henriette Caillaux (from Wikipedia) Intriguing to say the least. It can’t be left without a little bit of research on Wikipedia, and here is what I came up with. Henriette Caillaux w...

Paris in July 2016 is a challenge hosted by Thyme for Tea . This year I have been very busy, and have not had time to read anything much connected to Paris. I am still on Nana by Emile Zola, and hopefully I will be able to finish it. In the meantime I did watch a French movie, Coco avant Chanel. It is about the life of Coco Chanel before she became famous. It actually ends with her first fashion show. It starts when she and her sister are put in an orphanage by their widowed father, never to see him again. They strife to achieve something with their lives, singing in a bar or show place during the night, and sewing during the day to make ends meet. Her sister Adrienne, meets a baron and they fall in love. She is settled in as his mistress in a big house, but they can not married due to objections from his family. Through the baron and her sister she meets Étienne Balsan and she becomes his mistress. After a while he leaves the city to go back to his ancestral home. When the siste...

I am travelling and have not had time to concentrate on my favourite challenge, Paris in July , hosted by Thyme for Tea . However, having not read anything French, and I promised to read French books this year, it is still to come. However, France has been showing itself from a good side as regards sports recently. I went to Halle in mid-June with my son, to watch the tennis tournament there. It was really great, and we saw a lot of good tennis players. One, new to me, was Lucas Pouille. He lost in his first game in Halle to excellent player Key Nishikori. However, in this year's Wimbledon he made a really good run and went all the way to the quarter finals where he lost to Tomas Berdych from Czech Republic. Also other French players like Tsonga, Mahut, Benneteau and Roger-Vasselin made it a long way into the tournament. The other big sport event, except Tour de France, which I am not that interested in, is the Euro football tournament. France has made it to the final and I ...