The Missing by Tim Gautreaux – the 1920s and steamboats on the Mississippi...
The Missing by Tim Gautreaux (2009) French title: Nos disparus. Translated by Marc Amfreville Set in the South in the 1920s, The Missing by Tim Gautreaux portrays the life journey of his main...
View ArticleThe Whale’s Path by Francisco Coloane – travel to Quemchi, Chile.
The Whale’s Path by Francisco Coloane (1962) French title: Le Sillage de la baleine. Translated by François Gaudry. Francisco Coloane (1910-2002) was a Chilean writer born in Quemchi, Chiloé province...
View ArticleSwallowing Sand by Antônio Xerxenesky – Nutty Brazilian western set in Mexico
Swallowing Sand by Antônio Xerxenesky (2010) French title: Avaler du sable. Translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by Mélanie Fusaro. For my second book for Stu’s Spanish & Portuguese Lit month, I...
View ArticleLiterary escapade : a hike and a book in the Vosges mountains
Imagine you’re in the Vosges mountains and you’re starting the hike of the day and…stumble upon a bookstore. That’s what happened to me. A flight of stairs in a green tunnel and a sign for La Forêt des...
View ArticleMystic River by Dennis Lehane – Plot, style, engaging characters and sense of...
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (2001) French title: Mystic River. Translated by Isabelle Maillet. There are books whose characters stay with you for a long time and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane is one...
View ArticleClean Slate #5 : Catching up with billets – short-stories, historical fiction...
As usual, I read faster than I write billets, so I’ve got to play catch up again. Today we’ll go through a collection of short stories by T.C. Boyle, historical fiction by Lance Weller and a folk’s...
View ArticleNew Grub Street by George Gissing – Money of one’s own
New Grub Street by George Gissing (1882) Not translated into French. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won’t make concessions, or rather, he can’t make them;...
View ArticleThree French novellas for #WITMonth
I usually don’t participate to WIT Month (Women In Translation) but this year I’ll share about three novellas written by French women authors. Only the first one, The Braid, has been translated into...
View ArticleThird crime is the charm #9 : Suicides in London, Paris and Athens.
Easy crime fiction is always a good bet as far as Beach and Public Transports books go. I downloaded Life Sentence by A.K. Turner on my way to London as I knew it was set in Camden Town. It’s the...
View ArticleLiterary Escapade : London
We were in London at the end of July and let me share with you the literary bits of my stay. We visited the British Library and see, I was there 😊 , on this bench shaped as an open book: I enjoyed...
View ArticleFried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg – Nostalgia
Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg (1987) French title: Beignets de tomates vertes. I guess at one time we had upwards to two hundred fifty people living in Whistle Stop. But...
View ArticleClean Slate # 6 : Korea, England, France and Québec
September is usually a roller-coaster at work as everyone comes back energized from holidays, as projects postponed before the break come back in full force but this year the bumps and hills are...
View Article20 Books of Summer 2024 : how did that go?
Thanks to quiet holidays that gave me a lot of reading time and to novellas, I read 23 books and abandoned one. It means that I read more than 20 books. Yay me! I also shared two literary escapades,...
View ArticleThe Name of the Stars by Pete Fromm – a lovely memoir
The Names of the Stars: A Life in the Wilds by Pete Fromm. (2016). French title: Le nom des étoiles. Translated by Laurent Bury. I LOVED Indian Creek a memoir by Pete Fromm as much as I loved his novel...
View ArticleThe #1970Club : some reading tips
It’s that time of year again: Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon from Stuck in a Book host the Club event where we read and post about books published a defined year between 1920 and 1980....
View ArticleReading with Séverine, the 2024-2025 list
Yay! I’m doing a fourth year of readalong with my sister-in-law, aka Wonderful Séverine. We have chosen a book per month, trying to pick-and-mix countries but we are way too much into American...
View ArticleTroubles by J.G. Farrell – The #1970Club
Troubles by J.G. Farrell (1970) French title: Hôtel Majestic. In the summer of 1919, not long before the great Victory Parade marched up Whitehall, the Major left hospital and went to Ireland to claim...
View ArticleFestival America in Vincennes : wonderful
The Festival America is set in Vincennes, near Paris and is dedicated to American literature. It happens every other year and I really wanted to attend and this year, I finally managed to go. Yay! For...
View ArticleFestival America – a talk about book bans
As mentioned in my previous billet about the Festival America, I attended a discussion about book bans between Lauren Groff and Colm Toíbin. According to PEN America, there are 10 000 banned books in...
View ArticleUSFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky by Norman Mclean – a...
USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky by Norman Maclean (1976) French title: Montana 1919. Translated by Marie-Claire Pasquier. USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky...
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