Prvncl Book Club — For the Francophile

Welcome to the Prvncl Book Club! A monthly roundup of reads we highly recommend. This month we’re focused on all the francophiles out there, those of us with an unexplainable admiration for the French culture. These books will transport you to France through different time periods, regions, and characters.

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is a study of human stupidity and the "romantic malady," the despair and unhappiness faced by those who are unwilling or unable to resolve the conflicts between their dreams and idealized aspirations and the real world; in modern terms, one might say it is a study of a neurosis.

Perestroika in Paris


Perestroika — Paras for short — is a 3-year-old filly thoroughbred who's just come off a win at a racetrack in Paris. Being a “very curious filly,” she trots away from her stable when she finds her stall door unlocked, then wanders to the Place du Trocadero near the Eiffel Tower.

Paris, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

Rosecrans Baldwin talks about living and working in Paris for 18 months and finding the experience completely unlike what he expected. His memoir Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down, is a comic, personal account of observing the French capital from the inside out.

The Paris Wife

The Paris Wife focuses on the romance, marriage and divorce of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson, who met when Hemingway was 20 years old, and Richardson 28. They marry and move to Paris soon afterwards, where Hemingway befriends Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce.

The Paris Journal

Do you know what you would do with one day in Paris?
This anonymous solo traveler does. Accompanied only by her endless enthusiasm and vivid imagination, she surrenders to every whim and lets her love of the city – not a map – guide the way. She extols the virtues of small ice cream portions, debates public makeout sessions with the King of France, tails a mysterious elderly lady into a church and scarfs cheese. But whether she’s racing a dinner boat or running from flower pimps, one thing is clear: Her heart belongs to Paris. This exhilarating diary of a day in the City of Light combines 17 journal entries with over 140 sumptuous photos that bring the city, its people, and apparently its former kings to life.

Previous

New York Nostalgia Pt. 1
Next

Peace Changes Everything