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Greetings!
We’ve been to a lot of cities. Not to brag, but it just turned out that way – Hong Kong, Mumbai, Sarajevo, Cairo, Sydney, Istanbul, Rio, St. Petersburg, Quebec, Aleppo, Oslo, Nairobi, New York and many others. You get the point – life took us on the road. There is one city, however, that stands out in the firmament above the rest – PARIS! We lived there briefly in the 70’s and have visited innumerable times since. Sure, sure, it’s a cliché, but some clichés have merit.
What is it we love about it? The people, the streets, the parks, the monuments, the food, the movies, the rhythm of romance and sophistication. Our favorite restaurant – Le Hangar in a tiny alley across from the Pompidou Museum. Our favorite bar – the terrace of Aux Folies in Belleville. Our favorite museum – the Musee Rodin in the 7th. Our favorite place – the Place Dauphine on the Ile de la Cite between the Palais de Justice and Pont Neuf.
But, wait! These notes are supposed to be about books! During our first visit in 1963 we found a tattered copy of Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris in one of the hundreds of bouquinistes (bookstalls) that lined the Seine. In a recent visit we found a copy of The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul at The Abbey Bookshop on the edge of the Latin Quarter. Of the English-language bookshops, we prefer the Abbey, but there’s always Shakespeare & Co., Librairie Galignani, and a few others.
Few, if any, other cities would contend with Paris as the literary capital of the world, but no self-respecting Parisian would deign to assert that. It’s just so! You could look it up!
Keep on reading!
~All of us at AIB
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 The Seine: The River that Made Paris
by Elaine Sciolino
Well, Paris is at the center of this book and rightly so, but Sciolino’s interest is to place the city in the bookends of the river’s source and its estuary and key points along the way. One learns fascinating factoids about the Seine albeit always with a literary twist, but the heart of the book is the history, mythology, romance, violence, beauty and degradation of the river. The characters who live along and interact with the river bring to life much of its of its well-researched and well-told story.
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 Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone Beauvoir and Me
by Deirdre Bair
What could be more surprising than a dual biography of subjects that loathed each other? Beckett and Beauvoir never spoke again after she rejected one of his stories for publication in Sartre’s Les Temps Modernes. Bair began this work with an ingenue’s cold-call letter directly to Beckett himself. He responded with an invite and the rest is an interesting and absorbing history. Besides the lives of these two giant literary figures Bair recounts the fascinating battles among French intellectuals, German philosophers and other prickly egos. Always, the city of Paris is revealed in all its unique and sophisticated glory.
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 The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier
by Thad Carhart
Carhart, an American expat living on the Left Bank, walked his two children to school every day. On the way he passed a tiny shop signed as 'Desforges Pianos: outillage, fournitures' (Desforges Pianos: tools and supplies). One day he decided to pop in and found a jumble of piano parts - wire, key tops, elbows, etc. Toward the rear of the atelier were the pianos themselves and the owner who unceremoniously dismissed Carhart and his curiosity. Thus, began a cautious relationship nurtured over many months to a warm intimacy. Along the way he recounts much piano lore, his own work on the piano, and the life of his family in Paris. A charming and interesting book!
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